Growing for quality of resin and efffect. Not for the eye .(Does water starving produce more and better quality resin)

[mack 10]

Hey IC mag.
This has been something I've been looking at for years. Some of them without even realising it...

This is going to be very interesting.
Putting together little chunks of info picked up over the years.
Last year. I think, a paper was realised, questioning,
"Does not watering ,to point of wilt,
Cause stress reaction to make more and better quality resin."

This perked my interest,
As ,by chance , my last crop had just taught me something similar
By our accident.
Basically not been able to water the plants untill,

They just started to show signs of wilt ,slight drupe, then feeding well but must allow runoff.

The plants didn't look as good at harvest

But the resulting flowers where off the charts.
There seemed a clear difference in quality.

Seeing the paper and similar results myself is bit of coincidence so let's take this further
But with more of a control to it.
To see if it really does work or you think it did.

I try pull up the paper .

 

[JetLife175]

I would assume a plant would have a reaction to something like you mentioned. How it reacts? That's the question. I'll follow along. This seems very interesting.

 

[amoril]

This study was from 6 years ago, but shows a substantial increase in cannabinoids vs control group / no drought stress group, both in percent by weight (10-15% increase vs control) and total yield of cannabinoids (40+% increase vs control)

Increasing Inflorescence Dry Weight and Cannabinoid Content in Medical Cannabis Using Controlled Drought Stress

Controlled application of drought can increase secondary metabolite concentrations in some essential oil-producing crops. To evaluate the effects of drought on cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) inflorescence dry weight and cannabinoid content, drought stress was applied to container-grown cannabis...

journals.ashs.org

 

[mack 10]

I think that's the paper.
@amoril
Thanks for finding that.
As you can see by the numbers,
That caught me eye
I had kind of noticed through anecdotal evidence
But when I saw the paper,
A few things clicked.

I have to reread the paper
As I can't remember the frequency
Of starving/ watering they used.
either weekly or when needed.

My first experience,
I grew the plants as normal
Untill about a week before flip,
Then would not water untill I saw the first signs of wilt,
Then I'd give them some water,
With a shot of nutes when that had soaked in.

This time I'll use a control plant though.
I have seen the Moroccans use a similar technique.
Of basically no watering the plants
Anything other than rain.
You would see these fields,
They looked terrible,
Half the plants dried up an dead.
The rest one tall stem,
With everything else consumed by the plant to try and feed itself.
This never made sense to me,
At the time.
I'm would ask the farmers ,
Why do you do this?
They would laugh a bit,
An say that these conditions make the best Hashish.
All energy is pumped to the resin.

Back then I didn't believe it..
Now, there's Def something to it

 

[Piff Rhys Jones]

This is one of the reasons crop steering has taken off, using drought stress to increase quality and achieve an improved flowering expression.

Peace

 

[Artistick Seeds]

This study was from 6 years ago, but shows a substantial increase in cannabinoids vs control group / no drought stress group, both in percent by weight (10-15% increase vs control) and total yield of cannabinoids (40+% increase vs control)

Increasing Inflorescence Dry Weight and Cannabinoid Content in Medical Cannabis Using Controlled Drought Stress

Controlled application of drought can increase secondary metabolite concentrations in some essential oil-producing crops. To evaluate the effects of drought on cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) inflorescence dry weight and cannabinoid content, drought stress was applied to container-grown cannabis...

journals.ashs.org

This study confirms the choices I made for my current experiments, on autoflos and on an Afghan strain. Minimal irrigation and letting nature take its course.

I had already noticed the aromatic quality of wild plants on my land and in the mountains. We only have 500mm of rain per year, but all the mountain air is filled with incredible smells. All these plants have as substrate only a little earth and a lot of stones.

Another important thing is the low susceptibility to insects and diseases of these plants. I think it is interesting to look into this subject, and to experiment.

Of course, in these conditions, one must be ready to sacrifice yield and quantities produced, for the benefit of quality.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

This study was from 6 years ago, but shows a substantial increase in cannabinoids vs control group / no drought stress group, both in percent by weight (10-15% increase vs control) and total yield of cannabinoids (40+% increase vs control)

Increasing Inflorescence Dry Weight and Cannabinoid Content in Medical Cannabis Using Controlled Drought Stress

Controlled application of drought can increase secondary metabolite concentrations in some essential oil-producing crops. To evaluate the effects of drought on cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) inflorescence dry weight and cannabinoid content, drought stress was applied to container-grown cannabis...

journals.ashs.org

That paper made sense to me, so I've been doing this several years now. I don't measure/calculate anything, so don't know the direct affect it has had.

However, I don't stress 'em until they wilt. I'm all into creating a challenging environment for my plants but not stressing 'em out.

 

[Wolverine97]

If you let them go to the point of wilt, there is irreversible cell damage happening.

 

[Lester Beans]

I know several growers that always have bone dry pots. Lazy growers who go on and on about how they don't need a lot of water and it makes more resin and blah blah. Well their flowers suck. Running drought stuff indoors is not going to make better anything in my nearly 30 years experience opinion.

Outdoors I haven't given it much thought. I will say some tomatoes like Early Girl taste better when regular water is turned off after flower set.

 

[Rocket Soul]

This study confirms the choices I made for my current experiments, on autoflos and on an Afghan strain. Minimal irrigation and letting nature take its course.

I had already noticed the aromatic quality of wild plants on my land and in the mountains. We only have 500mm of rain per year, but all the mountain air is filled with incredible smells. All these plants have as substrate only a little earth and a lot of stones.

Another important thing is the low susceptibility to insects and diseases of these plants. I think it is interesting to look into this subject, and to experiment.

Of course, in these conditions, one must be ready to sacrifice yield and quantities produced, for the benefit of quality.

Grown outdoors/sunkissed and in the mountains; you need to factor in the extra UV apart from any possible drought stress. At midday the suns intensity and UV index is much much higher than any growlights on the market.

Doesnt mean the drought stress dont do anything but UV index would be my go to explanation; not only does it contain more uv, with altitude the UV gets deeper as there is less air to filter it out.

Hey IC mag.
This has been something I've been looking at for years. Some of them without even realising it...

This is going to be very interesting.
Putting together little chunks of info picked up over the years.
Last year. I think, a paper was realised, questioning,
"Does not watering ,to point of wilt,
Cause stress reaction to make more and better quality resin."

This perked my interest,
As ,by chance , my last crop had just taught me something similar
By our accident.
Basically not been able to water the plants untill,

They just started to show signs of wilt ,slight drupe, then feeding well but must allow runoff.

The plants didn't look as good at harvest

But the resulting flowers where off the charts.
There seemed a clear difference in quality.

Seeing the paper and similar results myself is bit of coincidence so let's take this further
But with more of a control to it.
To see if it really does work or you think it did.

I try pull up the paper .

Do you remember when you did the drought stress? Frequency/timing etc?

If its the same paper i read this was somehow very relevant; to do the stress in the week when THC production (rather than other cannabinoids) was at peak levels.

 

[Wolverine97]

I know several growers that always have bone dry pots. Lazy growers who go on and on about how they don't need a lot of water and it makes more resin and blah blah. Well their flowers suck. Running drought stuff indoors is not going to make better anything in my nearly 30 years experience opinion.

Outdoors I haven't given it much thought. I will say some tomatoes like Early Girl taste better when regular water is turned off after flower set.

That is my experience as well. It will also lock any unused nutrients into the plant tissue, once that cell damage happens. Then it tastes like hell, and burns hot.

 

[Artistick Seeds]

Even though I agree with your comments, I think the experiment is worth trying.

Moreover, if you look at the 2 topics I started on this subject, you will see that I did not talk about not doing any irrigation, but about limiting them to the strict minimum. The only thing I have to lose is seeds.

The first generation will tolerate it very badly, for autoflos in any case, because the Afghan strain comes from a culture without irrigation.

But I also count on the adaptability, generation after generation. My test will take time, several years.

I am very sensitive to the water problem, because my region suffers terribly from it, and I also lived for several years in Africa where the problem was similar, or even worse. This is also one of the reasons why I wanted to do this project.

I chose to use autoflos in order to limit the time these plants are exposed to difficult conditions. Under no circumstances would I let the plants dry out, and I would not add fertilizer.

If we take the example of wheat in large-scale cultivation, the more nitrogen we give it, the more susceptible it is to the elements. Its faster growth also makes it more susceptible to diseases and winds capable of flattening it.

In short, I am not a scientist, in these conditions, I expect more from my olive trees than from my cannabis plants... I have a few irrigated plants for my consumption, so I would not be too disappointed in case of failure.

 

[bigsur51]

it’s been my experience that the amount of trichomes has little to no effect on the potency of a plant

just more trichomes

an injured cannabis plant will produce auxins to heal itself

that is all

plant potency is in the genetics , I have grown outdoor plants that produced very few visible trichomes but was potent as all get out

and found the opposite to be true , lots of trichomes and low potency

 

[CharlesU Farley]

If its the same paper i read this was somehow very relevant; to do the stress in the week when THC production (rather than other cannabinoids) was at peak levels.

As I remember, and as we all know that's always fucking questionable , they measured stress/wilt by leaf angle, did it in week 7 of flowering, and only did it for a week or two. So about halfway through flowering, and for what I usually run that takes three and sometimes 4 months, I'll keep them dry till they sag a little, for a weekor two.

I water ebb and flow style in soil, let the soil dry out for three or four of days and then water it heavily on one day. I do that from seedling to harvest and always have. The leaves go from this:

To this:

Like I said, I never measure anything so I don't know whether I get the actual 12-13% increase in THC and CBD (not trichomes) that they do but it's real science, not bro science, and I believe in science.

 

[bigsur51]

some science

The results of the phytochemical analyses demonstrate that although there were some differences from the control variant, only the cultivar 'Tatanka Pure CBD' showed a statistically significant increase (at a statistical significance level α = 0.05) in the concentration of the cannabinoid CBDA. In conclusion, it would appear that using PEO-IAA in the culture medium is a suitable approach to improve in vitro cannabis multiplication.

Investigation of the Effect of the Auxin Antagonist PEO-IAA on Cannabinoid Gene Expression and Content in Cannabis sativa L. Plants under In Vitro Conditions - PMC

The in vitro shoot propagation of Cannabis sativa L. is an emerging research area for large-scale plant material production. However, how in vitro conditions influence the genetic stability of maintained material, as well as whether changes in the ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[CharlesU Farley]

some science

The results of the phytochemical analyses demonstrate that although there were some differences from the control variant, only the cultivar 'Tatanka Pure CBD' showed a statistically significant increase (at a statistical significance level α = 0.05) in the concentration of the cannabinoid CBDA. In conclusion, it would appear that using PEO-IAA in the culture medium is a suitable approach to improve in vitro cannabis multiplication.

Investigation of the Effect of the Auxin Antagonist PEO-IAA on Cannabinoid Gene Expression and Content in Cannabis sativa L. Plants under In Vitro Conditions - PMC

The in vitro shoot propagation of Cannabis sativa L. is an emerging research area for large-scale plant material production. However, how in vitro conditions influence the genetic stability of maintained material, as well as whether changes in the ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Contradictions, welcome to the world of scientific journals.

 

[bigsur51]

Contradictions, welcome to the world of scientific journals.

someone told me in college that I could buy an Abstract from Chyna for a reasonable price

 

[numberguy]

it’s been my experience that the amount of trichomes has little to no effect on the potency of a plant

just more trichomes

an injured cannabis plant will produce auxins to heal itself

that is all

plant potency is in the genetics , I have grown outdoor plants that produced very few visible trichomes but was potent as all get out

and found the opposite to be true , lots of trichomes and low potency


Agree I do, quality of resin over quantity. To me stressing a plant not used for breeding is a waste, its traits were locked in the seeds, most stresses will not improve the final resin quality. Breeding and production for consumption are two different things and require different methods. Too much of trying to do both at the same time has led to decline in seed quality, therefor plant resin quality.

 

[Ca++]

Even though I agree with your comments, I think the experiment is worth trying.

Moreover, if you look at the 2 topics I started on this subject, you will see that I did not talk about not doing any irrigation, but about limiting them to the strict minimum. The only thing I have to lose is seeds.

The first generation will tolerate it very badly, for autoflos in any case, because the Afghan strain comes from a culture without irrigation.

But I also count on the adaptability, generation after generation. My test will take time, several years.

I am very sensitive to the water problem, because my region suffers terribly from it, and I also lived for several years in Africa where the problem was similar, or even worse. This is also one of the reasons why I wanted to do this project.

I chose to use autoflos in order to limit the time these plants are exposed to difficult conditions. Under no circumstances would I let the plants dry out, and I would not add fertilizer.

If we take the example of wheat in large-scale cultivation, the more nitrogen we give it, the more susceptible it is to the elements. Its faster growth also makes it more susceptible to diseases and winds capable of flattening it.

In short, I am not a scientist, in these conditions, I expect more from my olive trees than from my cannabis plants... I have a few irrigated plants for my consumption, so I would not be too disappointed in case of failure.

Many years of guessing what the resin protects the plant from, seems to of boiled down to water loss. Leaves have stomata to regulate this, but buds loose a lot of water. Which for a plant that's in a dry region, perhaps some time since the last rain, and towards the end of a seasons drinking from the ground, is getting critical.

The linked paper is one dry-out that is basically at the end. After that dry-out they do water it, but it's chopped 4 days later. I don't think the watering frequency is greater than 4 days. They don't state it, but it it seems to be 5-7days. Making their dry-out pretty much the last part of the grow, but them last few days are perhaps important, as the plant may swing towards the importance of resin production to protect against future events. Or maybe, that few days to washing things out from the stems to the buds.

I have often tried to lower fertigation frequency as I'm chopping them out. In a bid to make the pots lighter, and easier to riddle. I have noted on many occasions, that stumps left in pots disconnected from the system, can resin up nicely. It's possibly connected.

I don't have pots big enough to support such extended dry-outs. In this study, 9 days past before deficiency showed, and the tissue water content still hadn't dropped. The plants had dropped photosynthesis about half, for water conservation. It was like the last day (day 11) that the plant wilted.
I would need some sort of moisture monitoring watering system, to hold at low substrate water availability for such a period. How low? well the control plants were taken down to 20% before watering, so we are looking a lot lower than that. It might be unreasonable with the level of monitoring we have. These guys only had 4 plants with a number of growers buzzing around them. Regularly changing failed sensors, for a host of reasons. I can't automate that. They would look like ICU patients.


I think the paper offers more confirmation that the resin is for water loss control. That we can exercise this, but save the experimenting until the plants are done.

 

[I Care]

If you let them go to the point of wilt, there is irreversible cell damage happening.

I think your EC and ph really matter on this topic.

That is my experience as well. It will also lock any unused nutrients into the plant tissue, once that cell damage happens. Then it tastes like hell, and burns hot.

Same thing I just said

The linked paper is one dry-out that is basically at the end. After that dry-out they do water it, but it's chopped 4 days later. I don't think the watering frequency is greater than 4 days. They don't state it, but it it seems to be 5-7days. Making their dry-out pretty much the last part of the grow, but them last few days are perhaps important, as the plant may swing towards the importance of resin production to protect against future events. Or maybe, that few days to washing things out from the stems to the buds.

I have often tried to lower fertigation frequency as I'm chopping them out. In a bid to make the pots lighter, and easier to riddle. I have noted on many occasions, that stumps left in pots disconnected from the system, can resin up nicely. It's possibly connected.

I don't have pots big enough to support such extended dry-outs. In this study, 9 days past before deficiency showed, and the tissue water content still hadn't dropped. The plants had dropped photosynthesis about half, for water conservation. It was like the last day (day 11) that the plant wilted.
I would need some sort of moisture monitoring watering system, to hold at low substrate water availability for such a period. How low? well the control plants were taken down to 20% before watering, so we are looking a lot lower than that. It might be unreasonable with the level of monitoring we have. These guys only had 4 plants with a number of growers buzzing around them. Regularly changing failed sensors, for a host of reasons. I can't automate that. They would look like ICU patients.


I think the paper offers more confirmation that the resin is for water loss control. That we can exercise this, but save the experimenting until the plants are done.

Someone I knew was growing tomatoes about 15 years ago using side watering methods to run off with half strength organic bioglores. He would wait until the plants would tell him they wanted water.

When I grew tomatoes about 4 years later I was given starts from a hydroponic tomato grower. My friend told me that it’s best for climate control and pests to side water the plants to run off and not flood the pot.

I watered half strength with grow big in veg and and biolfores in flower every watering. When I defoliated at the end of veg I gave each plant a shower and flushed them in the shower before beginning the bioflores.

In the middle of flower I did two applications half strength pk13/14 in place of bioFlores in flowering. I also used molasses throughout flower..

My watering frequency was based on when the pot would be dry enough that the plants show they’re dehydrated. Not where they wilt and spell like uncomposted grass clippings… just where the plant looks like it’s exhausted and needs a drink of water.


When I saw the trichomes turning milky to I gave only water the last two waterings. Allowed the plant to dry itself until it looked exhausted and turned the lights out for 48hours before I started the harvesting process.

The person I got the starts from agreed that that sour diesel had more flavor in organic soil than in water but they didn’t need the cure as much as I did and they also got a similar yield with less wattage.

Hey IC mag.
This has been something I've been looking at for years. Some of them without even realising it...

This is going to be very interesting.
Putting together little chunks of info picked up over the years.
Last year. I think, a paper was realised, questioning,
"Does not watering ,to point of wilt,
Cause stress reaction to make more and better quality resin."

This perked my interest,
As ,by chance , my last crop had just taught me something similar
By our accident.
Basically not been able to water the plants untill,

They just started to show signs of wilt ,slight drupe, then feeding well but must allow runoff.

The plants didn't look as good at harvest

But the resulting flowers where off the charts.
There seemed a clear difference in quality.

Seeing the paper and similar results myself is bit of coincidence so let's take this further
But with more of a control to it.
To see if it really does work or you think it did.

I try pull up the paper .

This is was kind of an art form in high grade indoor organic growing when it would fetch a lot of cash like 100-120 a quarter if I had to buy the stuff.

This is incredibly easy to do and probably don’t need a long cure process if your plants are fast flowering auto flower.

Monitor your PH inputs and run off value may be important in this cause that’s all I measured. Always checked to make sure pH in was below 7 and pH out was above 6.

If I need to give a run down again of the way people were doing this a long time ago for the best organic indoor gardening I can clear my thoughts and get a grammatically correct thing written for you.



EDIT didn’t realize this is like serious controlled experimental talk. I PTSD back to tomato days as a default cause I beat a recirculating system with dirt and I’m still proud of it. I don’t think you could actually beat reain production like this. disregard overall yield and focus on flower quality you can definitely get higher quality buds through dehydrating the plants