The varied bolting responses of A65, A45 and A25plants to vernalization treatment might be due to the different physiological features of the garlic pseudostem before vernalization treatment,as shown in Table 1. Plants in the A65, A45 or A25 groups presented significantly different soluble protein contents and POD and SOD activities before undergoing vernalization treatment; the youngest plants had the highest levels of the physiological indexes assessed. We hypothesized that higher soluble protein content and antioxidant enzyme activities would be beneficial for successful vernalization. This study supported this hypothesis based on theresults showing that soluble protein content and SOD activity inthe A25plants were both significantly increased after 40 days ofvernalization relative to those following a 20-day vernalizationtreatment (P < 0.001). In addition, the results demonstrate that bothplant age and temperature are vital for determining the success ofvernalization (Table 2) and that both significantly influenced thegarlic bolting rate (P < 0.001). It appears that a curved parabolicrelationship might exist between the vernalization conditions andthe success of vernalization. The critical inductive plant age andtemperature may be found through similar experiments