Originally Posted by GreenFin

By looking at them when they're young, like all the rest of us, instead of waiting until they're adults. Maybe this is a language thing, because virtually everyone except you is using the word 'sucker' to apply to young plants, whereas you are choosing to continue to refer to adults as suckers.

Adults that started off as water suckers should be very similar to adults that started off as sword suckers, since they've had a long lifespan (a year?) to catch up on root development. So if you're looking to differentiate, it just doesn't seem like it would make any sense at all to wait until they're adults before trying to determine which is which.

If you're wondering, "Well, if as adults water suckers eventually catch up to sword suckers in terms of root development, at least in nearly ideal conditions like are found in Puerto Rico, then why would the bunches tend to weigh slightly less?" the answer is almost certainly that nutritional deficiencies along the way during development have lingering effects at flowering/fruiting time. (Richard, iirc, has posted a study showing that potassium deficiencies in early development have a lingering negative impact on fruit production as an adult during that first fruiting cycle. So since water suckers have vastly inferior root systems during the early and adolescent stages, it seems to make perfect sense that adults that started off as water suckers would tend to have smaller first bunches.)

Originally Posted by GreenFin

That's not the only goal.

You're ignoring the fact that nutritional deficiencies during early stages of development have lingering effects on initial fruit production.

The fact that water suckers start off with vastly inferior root systems means that they're more likely to have nutritional deficiencies during early development, which in turn means that water suckers should tend to have smaller initial bunches.

You might counter that sword suckers start off with fewer leaves, which is a detriment, and that this should counteract the advantage that sword suckers have with their superior roots. The detriment of lacking leaves, however, is more easily overcome than the detriment of having a puny weak root system. It's pretty easy for a sword sucker with a huge root system to quickly push out some leaves, whereas it's a tougher and longer job for a water sucker to generate a massive root system.

Originally Posted by sunfish

AE AE water sucker should I throw it in the compost pile ?