I recall an article from one of the canna magazine talking about the dark period, it even made a claim that 10 days of darkness prior harvest can increase resin production, or something like that. Idk about that, just because I would hate to spend the 3 months or so to bring a plant to harvest and lose it to bud rot. Anyways, more importantly it said something about its best to harvest after a dark period, something to do with the thc recycling during the light period. The words used in the article did little to actually help me understand more on the subject. It really just stated some thesis statment. So who knows? A question I have been waiting to ask is, what if you have a scrog and harvest tops first? Can you do 24hr dark and then resume 12/12 with no effect to the unharvested buds? I remember a post a few months ago about a guy who went on vacation, like week 5 of flower and just shut his lights off for like 5 days and then just resumed. I think everything turned out just fine too.
It would not be difficult to stagger the harvest.
Chop down and take out one plant after 12 hours of darkness
start the drying process.
Chop down PLANT 2 after 24 hours
Plant 3 after 36 or 48 hours....
and so on....
Observe the appearance of the plants, the buds, the trichomes,
the fan leaves, the trim, the branches and stems.....
This experiment would be more useful if 3 or 4 plants could be discontinued at each stage.
That way it would be less likely that an anomalous plant could throw out the data.
ALL the plants would need to be identical genetics (clones)
grown exactly the same way (light, nutes, temps, RH....)
Only the final post grow dark phase could be different.