While it's easy to become concerned about retention levels early in the season, cotton sets a large number of fruiting positions over the growing season. As it matures, there are finite resources to fill bolls, meaning that plants will usually self-shed to the optimum fruit load, and usually only up to about 40% of bolls that could be set at the plant's fruiting positions remain at harvest.
Paul Grundy, the CottonInfo Technical Lead for IPM, talks us through the almost exponential increase in potential fruiting sites as the plant grows and explains why the industry has released new retention guidelines (available in the Cotton Pest Management Guide at www.cottoninfo.com.au).