Fig. 2

Firmness changes of pears harvested at four maturity stages at harvest and after air/ethylene treatment. S1, S2, S3, and S4 were harvested a week apart; S4 coincident with commercial harvest (RNA extracted from peel tissues of S1 to S4 at harvest were used for RNA sequencing). D14: 14 days at 20 °C following treatment of pears with air or 100 μLL⁻¹ ethylene (ET) for 24 h. Bars indicate standard errors; letters indicate significant differences among the three firmness values within a stage according to Tukey’s test (p-value ≤0.05)