Plant materialsAll field experiments were performed in a National High-qualityApple Demonstration Orchard in Fengxian, Jiangsu Province ofChina. It is located in the Ancient Yellow River Region where thefruit russeting of ‘Golden Delicious’ apple occurs frequently (Xiaand Zhou, 1988). Two cultivars, ‘Golden Delicious’ apple and itsnon-russeting mutant ‘Feng Shuai’ were used in the first experi-ment (2011), and only ‘Golden Delicious’ was used in the secondexperiment (2012). Both genotypes were 15 years old, which weregrafted on the rootstock of Malus robusta Rehd, and planted insandy loam soil. For phytochemical analysis, 15–20 fruit samplesof each genotype were randomly collected at each time point from14 to 125 DAFB in 2011. In 2012, the exogenous CA application wasconducted at 30 DAFB, and then 20 fruits of each treatment weresampled weekly before spraying and in the following four weeks.All fruits were transported rapidly to the lab as soon as possible