which were subjected to natural senescence (control) or pre-treated with 0.1 M sucrose or 0.2 mM DPSS for 7 days. Sucrose was shown to lengthen the vase life of cut carnation flowers (Borochov and Mayak, 1984; Mayak and Dilley, 1976; Mayak and Kofranek, 1976). DPSS is a potent preservative for cut carnation flowers, which inhibits the onset of ethylene production in the flowers undergoing natural senescence (Midoh et al., 1996; Onoue et al., 2000). In the control cut ‘LPB’ flowers, the number of fully-open flowers increased rapidly from two days after the start of incubation and