A study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of using a commercial ray tracing software package (Ray Dream Designer) to model the reflectance of a cotton canopy. Results of this study indicate that, while use of ray tracing software may not precisely duplicate all the optical interactions between light and the plant canopy, this approach may be useful in getting an approximate visualization of the effects of certain stresses in the plant canopy, and thus provide useful information on our ability to detect these stresses through remote sensing.