The indeterminate growth habit and the production of multiple fruiting sites on axillary branches allows the cotton plant, Gossypium hirsutum L, to initiate more fruiting sites than it ever matures as harvestable bolls. Work across the Cotton Belt indicates that fruit retention represents less than 30% of the total fruiting sites produced. First position sites on fruiting branches contribute 50-80% of the harvested yield and second position sites contribute 20-25%. An understanding of the contribution of individual fruiting sites to yield and quality of lint and seed is essential to development of management strategies to optimize inputs and reduce cost of production by trying to protect fruiting sites that have very low probabilities of producing harvestable fruit. Due to the relative shortness of the growing season in West Texas, it is even more important to understand the role of various yield components to final harvestable yield and the quality of the fiber at each fruiting site. Overall yield is dependant on the number of bolls per unit land area and the amount of lint boll^-1. Boll number is dependent on the number of plants acre^-1 as well as the number of bolls plant^-1. Plants acre^-1 can be controlled to a certain extent at planting time by choosing the right seeding rate. The bolls plant^-1 component is strongly associated with the environmental resources available to each plant and inversely related to plant density. Boll size is a function of the number of seed boll^-1 and the amount of lint that each seed produces. The objective of this research was to determine the relative importance of each fruiting site to final yield and quality. First position bolls accounted for 70 to 75% of the total yield. Second positions made up 20 to 25% and third and fourth positions contributed less than 5% to the overall yield of the crop. The bulk of the yield (>75%) was produced from mainstem nodes 8 through 12 This makes first position fruit on these nodes very important to total lint produced. Lint boll^-1 increased as the number of seed boll^-1 increased. Lint seed^-1 appeared to be more closely coupled to the environment than did the number of seed boll^-1. Lint seed^-1 is a weight measurement and is made up of fiber length and micronaire. Under severe environmental stress, the fibers will not elongate or they will not build as dense a secondary wall, depending on what growth stage the boll is in at the time of the stress. The results of these analyses provide valuable information as to the value of individual fruiting sites to final yield and quality.