In cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) crop management, the practice of collecting detailed structural data just prior to harvest, called final plant mapping, may provide useful information about the crop's response to its environment and to management actions. The objective of this study was to analyze final plant map data taken in Acala cotton in the San Joaquin Valley, California, to determine whether relationships exist that might be useful in data interpretation. Five years of data taken from statewide variety trials were used to develop a statistical model. Data in each year were collected at eight locations for five cultivars. Seven parameters were most substantially related to cotton lint yield, boll retention, and earliness. These parameters were number of vegetative branches, percentage boll retention in the bottom five fruiting branches, late season boll retention, plant height, number of first position bolls, late season boll retention, and number of main stem nodes in the zone of the plant contributing 95% of the total bolls. These quantities provide useful information in interpreting an Acala cotton crop's performance. The model was compared with data from a sixth year. This comparison generally supported the conclusions drawn based on the 5 yr of data. The relationships between plant map indices and yield are not sufficiently precise to enable them to be used in yield forecasting, but they do provide a useful means to evaluate the effects of environmental conditions and management strategies.