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I haven’t seen any studies about the effects of side lighting but I’m happy to dig into the theories of it all. Ideally we’d have adequate lighting over the entire plant for optimal growth as plants/branches in low light start to stretch or grow sparse, larfy flowers as well as acting less as carbon sources and potentially becoming carbon sinks if the light level is low enough. Outdoors in full sun the plants get enough light that it’s rarely an issue other then pruning the center of the plant if it’s heavily shaded.
Indoors is where is where we struggle with even light penetration to ensure an even canopy of nice buds with the main strategies being either SoG or Scrog to achieve that. Growing vertically doesn’t change that dynamic it changes affects light distribution with the idea being to increase efficiency since no light is reflected which reduces the amount of energy significantly as well as creating issues with hot spots of uneven light distribution.
Adding vertical side lighting in a horizontal grow would make sense if the canopy depth was great enough that the lower parts of the plants didn’t get adequate light. On the other hand it opens up the question of what’s the point in spending more resources to grow bigger plants, that need supplemental lighting when instead we can control plant height based on veg time? So for example in a greenhouse, growing seeds where the flowering schedule or plant size isn’t necessarily controlled it could easily make sense compared to growing clones in a tent where we have control of the variables to control plant size directly.
It’s the kind of question that has no clear, definitive answer as it depends entirely on the “how and why” of the grower based on their needs/resources. Often that kind of nuance is lost on the interwebs so I hope that helps and don’t hesitate to ask if I can clarify anything. That is an excellent question which will probably help a lot of people, while opening up more discussions about the nuances of growing.
