[2] Ethephon is often used on wheat, coffee, tobacco, cotton, and rice in order to help the plant's fruit reach ripeness more quickly.

It initiates fruiting over a period of several weeks, promotes early concentrated boll opening, and enhances defoliation to facilitate and improve the efficiency of scheduled harvesting.

[3][4] Ethephon is also widely used by pineapple growers to initiate the fruit's reproductive development (forcing).

Ethephon is also sprayed on mature-green pineapple fruits to degreen them to meet produce marketing requirements.

[citation needed] It is sometimes used by cannabis growers to induce flowering, abort seed formation, increase the quality of the resins, induce the appearance of female flowers in male plants, and to suppress the development of male flowers in hermaphrodite plants.