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In Queensland, pineapple plants are artificially induced to flower by spraying with chemical agents as a standard industry practice; nevertheless an important percentage of plants flower naturally with fruit maturing ahead of the normal summer harvest. This results in the need of extra harvest passes and significantly increases growing costs. In pineapple, ethylene is thought to be responsible for natural flowering due to low temperatures. ACC synthase is the key regulatory enzyme in the biosynthesis of ethylene. Our research team has isolated and characterised an ACC synthase gene induced by cold temperature treatment of pineapple plants followed by an extended warm period. We are producing transgenic pineapple plants carrying sense and antisense copies of the flowering-related ACC synthase gene in order to down-regulate the expression of the gene and therefore suppress natural flowering.