Senescence

I was delving into the GrowFAQ today and noticed something i'd just like a bit of clarification on: senescence, of course.
It was listed as a positive effect of the use of Ethrel...or here:

Ethrel

Ingredients: ethlephon

Uses: promotes senescence and increases flower size.

Bam! Okay so i hit up Wikipedia for some quick answers and they say its
'the combination of processes of deterioration which follow the period of development of an organism.'

So are they trying to say it helps expedite the drying process or what?

Senesence is the programmed death of a plant. sort of like its genes tell it, "hey you're old now. die" or "those leaves at the bottom arent needed, pull out the nutrients and kill them"

It seems like ethlephon would speed up your plant killing itself while making the buds as big as possible before the whole plants dies. You want big flowers, or buds but you also dont want senescence hastened. Maybe use some cytokinins, those prevent senescence.

LOL that's funny because I was reading a lot of articles earlier and read that one and wondered the same thing but skipped over it. Nice post!