Due to competition among individual trees and other exogenous factors that change the growth environment, each tree grows following its own growth trend with some structural changes in growth over time. In the present article, a new method is proposed to detect a structural change in the growth process. We formulate the method as a simple statistical test for signal detection without constructing any specific model for the structural change. To evaluate the p-value of the test, the tube method is developed because the regular distribution theory is insufficient. Using two sets of tree diameter growth data sampled from planted forest stands of Cryptomeria japonica in Japan, we conduct an analysis of identifying the effect of thinning on the growth process as a structural change. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method is useful to identify the structural change caused by thinning. We also provide the properties of the method in terms of the size and power of the test.