Cotton can compensate for early season square damage (even the total removal of all fruiting sites from the first 5 fruiting branches) with no significant impact on maturity, yield or lint quality.
Several years of replicated research in commercial fields from Emerald (central Queensland) to Griffith (southern NSW) in both above and below average rainfall seasons found that as long as the season had good growing conditions, damaged cotton rapidly caught up with undamaged plants by growing additional bolls further out on fruiting branches or on the vegetative branches rather than adding them higher on the main stem.
CottonInfo IPM Tech Specialist Paul Grundy (Qld DAF) provides a demonstration of how early season damage was simulated, and follows the crop through the season so you can see for yourselves that there's no difference in final crop height, yield or maturity.
The new retention guidelines have been published in the 2023-24 Cotton Pest Management Guide.