The objective of this work was to create a practical and effective mathematical model for the early prediction of crops based on some phenological attributes of the plant: height, number of fruits in the 4th and 5th internodes of the plagiotropic branches, length in meters of the planted coffee row and diameter measured at the lower region of the coffee plants. The experiment was carried out in the coffee plantations of IFSULDEMINAS - campus Machado - where the productivity of four cultivars of different sizes were analysed during the 2010-2011 season: Catucaí, Mundo Novo, Ruby and Topaz. Each of these was an experimental unit, from which 10 plants were randomly chosen. Of these, 6 branches of each plant were sampled (three on the side of the rising sun, and three on the side of the sunset; two in the upper third, and two in the middle region, and two in the lower region of each plant). Data were collected at the end of February 2011. The model which considers the proportion of the coffee plant canopy in order to get closer to the real architecture of the plant was the most significant, with a coefficient of determination of 0.83.
phenological index; Coffea arabica; crop prediction
