The effect of branching on cotton plant growth and development

Cotton plant development is usually predicted through a function of thermal time either at a daily step (Hanan and Hearn, 2003) or at a growth cycle (de Reffye et al., 1999). The GREENLAB model fits well to the architecture of some simple structured plants, e.g. pruned cotton (de Reffye et al., 1999) and maize (Guo et al., 2006). In the model, it is assumed a constant developmental rate and also stable specific leaf weight (SLW) throughout all the plant developmental stages. We are interested to see whether and how the existence of branches will influence cotton growth and development in terms of metamer production rate, SLW, and blade area profiles.