My friend treats his drying room like a Kodak dark room of old and swears light on the buds during the drying stage is a critical mistake. Any thoughts on this and how light might degrade the drying/curing trichomes?
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Heat and light are your biggest enemy come harvest time, first your gonna lose a lot of your terps and then as it goes on your thc will start to degrade it does this naturally your job at harvest is to try and make sure you have minimal cannabinoid loss in order to achieve the quality you hope for… a careless harvester will most certainly end up with medicine that smells and taste like hay.
I’ve had a lot of bud go to crap over crappy harvest and dry techniques and so when I started doing it properly I noticed a huge climb in quality/ number one no quick drying/ drying should take around 7-10 days some are able to go longer some shorter but that’s gonna save a ton of those of those terps/ number 2 harvest right before lights on and keep them drying in the dark. And then of course proper cure
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I just experimented with this. I split my Maui in half and dried half in my grow room (with lights on 12/12) and the other half in my dark dry tent. The half dried in the grow room a few days faster but after being in jars for 3 weeks, there’s no difference between the two. Mind you, this was just one experiment. I plan on doing more to see if there’s consistency in the results.
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I have dried in lit tents and dark tents. I can’t tell a diffrence. what seems to matter more is RH, air flow and duration of drying.
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I understand when someone isn’t capable of having extra space or a secluded environmentally sound place to hang and dry to the best of there ability. And I also agree with RH and temp environment being important for quality… but I stand by my statement above and might actually make some good controlled experiments in the near future, my understanding is terpenes are obviously the flavor smell, but they are also protection against heat and light- they evaporate to help block UV light/ a lot of those terps you smell during the grow are the more volatile terpenes and they tend to start evaporating at at 70 degrees and up/ therefore if that’s true I think it’s pretty safe to say that hang drying your plants in an operating grow room running at above 70 degrees for 12 hours a day or more for many days most definitely increases terpene loss/ probably not very noticeable to some because it’s not going effect your psychoactive cannabinoids cuz they degrade extremely slowly until your start getting into above 100 degree temps… also i may have exaggerated a touch 
haha because in my personal experience with my set up there is difference not huge but enough for me to change my whole harvest process around keeping it dark with RH/temp stability but find I only need to cure for 1 week and it’s stinky stinky stable and ready! I’m still figuring out my indoor op still trying different things finally have several plants going without issues and have my temps,RH, airflow, and nutes all tuned where I want it, big change from my oldschool gorilla grower ways
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