Girdling the pedicel had no significant effect (P>0.05) on fruit growth during dehydration compared with the ungirdled control (fig. 3). No interaction was observed between treatment (girdled vs ungirdled) and water potential (P=0.959), indicating fruit of each treatment were growing in the same way under water stress, despite the phloem of the girdled fruit being fully disrupted. Both girdled and ungirdled fruit continued to grow significantly as water potential decreased (P<0.0001) with girdled fruit growing by 4.25% (±0.4%SE) on average and ungirdled fruit growing 4.5% (±0.67%SE) over the 6 days of plant dehydration.