Senescence is considered as the last developmental stage… Generally, Plants grow continuously until they reach a maximum size, after which senescence can occur… Senescence progresses until fruit development and maturation is finished and ends with the complete disintegration of the tissues…
Could we distinguish fruit maturity onset from fruit senescence onset in non-climateric fruits?
While climacteric fruits start their senescence phase after a climacteric peak (M) representing by a maximum respiration rate combined with a high production rate of ethylene (ripening phase), the non-climacteric fruits don't possess these phenomen. The only mehod to distinguish senescence phase from maturation one in non-climacteric fruits is the quality attributes of fruit such as flesh hardness that decreases significantly. Furthermore, the decrease in acidity is another indicator which can be explained by the use of organic acids in late fermentation process. There are other indicators such as decrease in Brix value, antioxidant activity, and ethylene production rate bedsides an increase in pH value and some enzymatic reactions products levels like galacturonic acid. The detection of some metabolites in plants especially those of oxidative property could help in this issue.
First the difference between maturation and senescence is that maturation onset occurs after when fruit reached to full growth and after this point no further growth will occur, here maturation starts in which the phenomenon of flavour, sugar, volatile components, fragrance etc development occurs.
After this full development, the degradation process starts which is the senescence in which disintegration of tissues starts, change in flavour usually becoming bad, smell, fruit tissues become further softer, etc and at last death of tissues.
Non climacteric fruit also follows this phenomenon but they mature mostly naturally on trees and after that, after a longer period as compared to climacteric fruits due to lower ethylene production senescence occurs late in these kind of fruits. Senescence in non climacteric fruit follows same disintegration phenomenon (as suggested by @Mr. Duried Alwazeer wrote) but slower than climacteric fruits.
In non climacteric fruits maturation mostly occurs naturally on trees underlying flavour, smell, etc development whereas senescence do occur after full maturation underlying degradation, disintegration of tissues etc. after some time.
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