Blue luminescence of ripening bananas.
As revealed in the last two decades, chlorophyll breakdown in senescent leaves appears to occur by a largely common and well-controlled catabolic path, which rapidly furnishes non-fluorescent, colorless chlorophyll catabolites (NCCs) as “final” products.[1,2] Recently NCCs detected in ripe apples and pears were found to be the same as those in degreened leaves, suggesting chlorophyll catabolism in leaf senescence and fruit ripening to be similar (Scheme 1).[3,4]