Articles
USE OF INHIBITORS OF ETHYLENE ACTION
Senescence can be defined as an irreversible process of gradual degeneration and disintegration of plant tissue, eventually leading to the death of the organism (Bruinsma, 1983). Detachment of plant organs, like cut-flowers, usually advances the onset of senescence.
Flowers wilt sooner, leaves will yellow earlier than when they remain attached to the plant.
Senescence is under hormonal control.
This enables the grower to use chemicals to affect (promote or delay) the longevity and shelf life of postharvest commodities, like cut-flowers and fruits.
By using promoters or inhibitors of hormone action it is possible to interfere with the hormonal homeostatic system within the plant.
Webster’s Dictionary describes homeostasis as "A tendency toward maintenance of a relatively stable internal environment in the bodies of higher animals through a series of interacting physiological processes". A classical example is the maintenance of a fairly constant degree of body heat in the face of widely varying external temperatures.
In the present report the concept of homeostasis will be restricted to physiological processes related to senescence and hormones.
Cohen and Bandurski (1982) described hormonal homeostasis as "The maintenance of a steady state concentration of the hormone in the receptive tissue appropriate to any fixed environmental condition". During plant development the information issued by the genome will change under the influence of exogenous and/or endogenous factors, and this will result in a new homeostatic system such that the steady state concentration of the hormone is fixed at a new level.