Assessments. Before treatment, the maximum height and width of five randomly selected plants from each genotype were determined. The total number of leaves on each plant was also counted at the beginning of experiments. After 1-MCP and/or ethylene treatments, the plants were evaluated daily for leaf abscission and senescence. Leaves were rated as senescent when 10% or greater of the leaf surface developed visible chlorosis. The number of leaves that abscised and/or senesced was expressed as a proportion (%) of the initial number on a plant.
Experiment design and data analysis.Plants were arranged in a completely randomized block design within the evaluation room. Depending on the experiment, five to eight replicate plants were used for each treatment.Proportion data were arcsine-transformed to approximate a normal distribution and then subjected to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) using the generalized linear model procedure of SAS (Version 9.1; SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC). When significant (P # 0.05) treatment effects were determined by ANOVA,data means were separated by the least significant difference test at P = 0.05.