Effects of ethylene, cytokinin and physical treatments on BoPaO gene expression of harvested broccoli.

Background: Broccoli is a highly perishable vegetable that shows enhanced postharvest senescence and intense de-greening caused by chlorophyll degradation. One of the key steps of chlorophyll catabolism is the opening of chlorophyll tretrapyrrole catalysed by pheophorbide a oxygenase (PaO). In this study the expression of a gene encoding a putative PaO was characterised under several chemical and physical treatments.