Question

After buying green bananas or unripe avocadoes, they can be kept in a brown bag to ripen. The hormone released by the fruit and trapped in the bag is probably:

a) Ethylene
b) Gibberellin
c) Abscisic acid
d) Cytokinin

Answer 1

The hormone responsible for the ripening of fruits like bananas and avocados when kept in a brown bag is ethylene, a gaseous plant hormone that speeds up the process by converting starches and acids into sugars.

Step-by-step explanation:

After buying green bananas or unripe avocados, they can be kept in a brown bag to ripen. The hormone released by the fruit and trapped in the bag that promotes ripening is ethylene. This gaseous plant hormone stimulates the conversion of starch and acids to sugars, speeding up the ripening process. Ethylene also has other roles in plants, such as triggering leaf and fruit abscission, flower fading and dropping, and promoting germination in some plants.

You can observe the effects of ethylene by placing a ripe fruit, which releases ethylene, into a closed container or paper bag with an unripe fruit. The ethylene gas released by the ripe fruit will accelerate the ripening of the other fruit.

In contrast, other plant hormones like gibberellin, abscisic acid, and cytokinin play different roles and are not the primary agents of ripening in the context of storing green bananas or unripe avocados in a bag.