Abstract: Ethylene production in non-climacteric fruit is far lower than that of climacteric fruit，which led to the previous conclusion that ethylene played very limited role in regulating ripening and senescence of non-climacteric fruit since 1970s. However，due to the economical importance of many non-climacteric fruit such as citrus，strawberry，grape，loquat，etc，more research work have been reported for such fruit recently. Evident results show that many ripening related processes in non-climacteric fruit are also ethylene regulated，and non-climacteric fruit and climacteric fruit share some similar molecular regulation mechanisms during the changes of fruit quality. Research advance in regulation of ethylene during ripening and senescence of non-climacteric fruit are reviewed in this paper.

Key words: non-climacteric fruit, ripening and senescence, ethylene, biosynthesis, signal transduction