Résumé
Breeding efforts have produced highly productive Coffea arabica varieties, but heavy fruit loads often impede vegetative growth of the branches. This leads to alternate fruit-bearing patterns, and premature die-back of fruit-bearing branches. Understanding the relationship between fruit load and vegetative growth is critical to improving sustainable yield. The study aimed to explore how fruit load affects vegetative growth in coffee branches and to assess whether management interventions, such as reducing fruit load, could mitigate negative impacts on yield sustainability. An experimental study was conducted in Costa Rica, tracking the growth of coffee branches at two canopy levels over seven months. Monthly assessments were made with varying fruit load treatments to investigate its influence on vegetative growth. Repeated data analyses were applied to account for temporal (monthly) and spatial (two canopy levels) autocorrelations, enabling a comprehensive understanding of how fruit load affects growth dynamics. Partial removal of fruit nodes significantly increased vegetative growth, leading to improved productivity in the subsequent year. Antedependence models were the models that best captured temporal and spatial correlations for our dataset (data repeated in time and spacecorresponding to the two levels observed in the architecture of coffee trees). The findings suggest that regulating fruit load can optimize vegetative growth and stabilize yield in Coffea arabica. This study highlights the tradeoff between fruit load and vegetative growth, showing that effective fruit load management can enhance long-term yield stability in coffee production. Statistical analysis reveals changing correlation structures over time, emphasizing the cumulative effects of treatments on vegetative growth and supporting improved cultivation practices.