This study demonstrates a relationship between earliness of ripening and stalk elongation which could be useful in a sugarcane selection programme. Sixty-four sugarcane genotypes with contrasting ripening behaviour were grown in a quadruple-lattice design and ordinary logistic curves were shown to give the best fit between stalk height and time. Genotypes with early high sucrose contents gave logistic curves with earlier inflection points and steeper slopes at the point of inflection. The inflection point was shown to be a reliable indicator of time of ripening and it was suggested that stalk height per se could be considered as a selection criterion for earliness of ripening in sugarcane.