Senescence. This will most certainly result in a smoother end product with better flavor and smoke.
You can force senescence by flushing plain water for the last 7-10 days before harvest by inducing stress or just wait for it to happen. I notice if you wait for a heavy senescence on some strains the plant will be overripe though, like where all the trichomes are dark orange heads. Not good, that's when THC converts to CBN. Unless you like super red eyes and feeling tired/hungry/slow.
The trick to the best quality at the end IMO is strip all big fan leaves off, chop branches into like 8-12" lengths and hang on clothes hangers upside down in a pitch black room that is kept as close to 60 F and 60% RH as possible. Once the stems snap instead of bend like straws (10-14 days depending) I will then buck all the buds off the branches into a big gasket storage tote with added shipping wrap around any air cracks and I begin burping, once my cure seems good I dry trim the flowers and package for storage and further cure.
You really don't want to store weed in clear packaging either, or in an area where temperature is changing a lot if you plan to actually store it away and cure it longer than a few weeks.
Somewhat Unrelated vent: I noticed the problem with the illegal weed in Michigan is these people don't know shit about curing weed and just hang the whole plants on vertically hung trellis netting in the same room they grew the weed in with other plants still growing, 1000W HPS shining on the plants and dry hot air. Once the stuffs dry they use a machine to strip the buds off the branches, then they run it through huge commercial trimmer machines that use vacuums to suck all the sugar leaves, trichomes and hairs off the buds, package and sell, no cure. That's why their shitty pounds of weed only cost $800-900.
