Polyols regulate the flower senescence by delaying programmed cell death in gladiolus

Programmed cell death (PCD) is associated with petal senescence, but little is known about the triggering or execution of the process of cell death in petals. In the present study, membrane disruption and DNA fragmentation, events characteristic of PCD, were found to be present in the advanced stage of petal senescence studied with ethylene-insensitive flowers of gladiolus, indicating that plant and animal cell death phenomena share one of the molecular events in the execution phase. When the gladiolus florets were treated with inositol both wilting and DNA fragmentation of petals were suppressed/delayed. The present study has provided the initial evidence that inositol has an inhibitory/suppressive effect on apoptotic cell death.