Plants synchronize their life history events with proper seasonal conditions, and as the fitness consequences of each life stage depend on previous and/or subsequent one, changes in environmental cues create cascading effects throughout their whole life cycle. For monocarpic plants, proper senescence timing is very important as the final production of plants depends on it. Citing available literatures, this review discusses how plants not only may delay senescence until after they reproduce successfully, but they may also bring senescence time forward, in order to reproduce in favored conditions. It demonstrates that even though senescence is part of aging, it does not necessarily mean plants have to reach a certain age to senesce. Experiments using different aged plants have suggested that in interest of their final outcome and fitness, plants carefully weigh out environmental cues and transit to next developmental phase at proper time, even if that means transiting to terminal senescence phase earlier and shortening their lifespan. How much plants have control over senescence timing and how they balance internal and external signals for that is not well understood. Future studies are needed to identify processes that trigger senescence timing in response to environment and investigate genetic/epigenetic mechanisms behind it.

中文翻译：

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衰老：植物可能会要求自己牺牲的死亡时间

植物将其生活史事件与适当的季节条件同步，并且由于每个生命阶段的适应性后果取决于前一个和/或随后的一个，环境提示的变化会在整个生命周期中产生级联效应。对于单果类植物，正确的衰老时机非常重要，因为植物的最终产量取决于它。本文引用现有文献，讨论了植物如何不仅可以延迟衰老直到成功繁殖后，而且还可以提前衰老时间，以便在有利的条件下繁殖。它表明，即使衰老是衰老的一部分，也不一定意味着植物必须达到一定的衰老年龄。使用不同衰老植物的实验表明，出于最终结果和适应性的考虑，植物会仔细权衡环境线索，并在适当的时间过渡到下一发育阶段，即使这意味着更早地过渡到末端衰老阶段并缩短其寿命。目前尚不清楚多少植物可以控制衰老时间，以及它们如何平衡内部和外部信号。需要进行进一步的研究，以确定对环境有响应的触发衰老时间的过程，并调查其背后的遗传/表观遗传机制。