Fruit yield or quality was not different among topping heights in any of the four years of the experiment. Topping height did not affect yield, probably because of the wide spacing and tall trees in this orchard. The canopies of untopped trees had little fruit within 4 feet of the ground as a result of shading of the lower canopy by neighboring trees. Removing the top 4 feet from an 18-foot tall tree moved the fruit-bearing volume downward in response to greater light penetration into the lower canopy but did not decrease the volume of the tree that received sufficient light to produce fruit. This effect was in contrast to severe manual pruning, which reduced the volume of the unshaded canopy overall, limiting the volume available for fruit production. A highly significant positive-linear correlation was found in the data across the four years and treatments between the total numbers of fruit produced per acre versus the total number of fruit sized 88 to 48 per carton produced per acre. This functional relationship existed whether reductions in fruit numbers produced per acre were the result of severe pruning in March or from weather-related phenomena such as occurred in 2001, suggesting that anything that reduced fruit numbers below approximately 130,000 fruit per acre resulted in a decrease in the number of fruit sized 88 to 48 per carton in this orchard.