Ethephon at 300 μg/liter when applied at the transplant stage (5 to 7 leaves) abscised and/or aborted flowers of 20 tomato cultivars studied. However, differential cultivar response was observed when adventitious root proliferation and regeneration were studied. ‘Ohio 7663’, ‘Campbell 28’, ‘Libby 7241’, and ‘Heinz 1706’ showed extensive stem root growth, whereas ‘Heinz 727’, ‘Peto 80’ and ‘Libby 8990-A’ had small amounts of stem roots. Ethephon treatment increased stem-root regeneration from 17.9 to 40.2 roots/plant, root length from 5.2 cm to 9.4 cm and length of the stem with roots from 7.7 to 11.0 cm; whereas, ethephon reduced flowers/plant from 1.3 to 0.6 and fruit/plant from 0.5 to 0.0.