Simulated (lines) distributions of final leaf area for the three types of shoot (short, A; medium, B; long, C) and observed (bars) distributions for medium and long shoots at harvest (15 September). Simulations correspond to the ‘Fuji’ 2 tree. Observed values were collected in 1998 on two digitized 4-year-old ‘Fuji’ trees (42 and 47; Experiment 1). For long and medium shoots, mean simulated and observed leaf areas are mentioned on the left side of the figure. Shoot type frequencies are also represented on the left side of the figure and were computed for each type of shoot as the ratio of the number of shoots of the considered type to the total number of shoots in the tree.