How can we accurately quantify the number of flowers available to pollinators—particularly wild bees—on fruit trees such as wild cherry trees?
This is a timely and concrete ecological question: information of this kind is essential for better understanding the relationships between vegetation structure, the availability of floral resources, and the population dynamics of insect pollinators, which are currently under pressure due to environmental change and land-use practices.
The starting point of the research lies in the authors’ awareness that traditional methods for counting flowers—based on ground-level manual observations or two-dimensional photographs—are often imprecise, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale up.
To overcome these limitations, the researchers propose an innovative approach: the use of advanced three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning technologies (LiDAR) and point clouds to capture the detailed form and structure of trees.
With this technique, each tree is fully digitized, and the resulting 3D spatial information is combined with other data to estimate the number of flowers present on each plant.
More specifically, the team collected a range of field data, including manual flower counts, photographs, and laser scans of a population of wild cherry trees. The 3D data are not simple images, but highly detailed point clouds in which each point represents a portion of the plant’s surface captured by the LiDAR system.
The algorithms developed by the authors analyze these point clouds to precisely estimate branch geometry, flower arrangement, and spatial flower density.
In practice, the model “learns” to recognize the characteristic shape and distribution of cherry blossoms within the scanned volume, making it possible to extrapolate an estimate of the total number of flowers and the potential forage available to pollinators.
A crucial aspect addressed in the article is the validation of this method.
The authors compare the results of the 3D model with data collected manually in the field, showing that estimates derived from point clouds are highly correlated with real flower counts.
Immagine 1. L'analista del settore retail Adam Brohimer afferma che le ciliegie non sono così sensibili al prezzo come molti credono, e che c'è margine per aumentarle per migliorare i profitti dei coltivatori. Brohimer è intervenuto all'83° Cherry Institute annuale presso lo Yakima Convention Center di Yakima, Washington, a gennaio. (TJ Mullinax/Good Fruit Grower)
This demonstrates that 3D modeling is not only theoretically interesting, but also practically effective and potentially applicable at large scales—for example, in assessing the quality of floral resources in orchards, agroecological systems, or natural landscapes where pollinator biodiversity is a key ecological indicator.
From an ecological perspective, the study has important implications.
The quantity and spatial distribution of flowers directly influence the strength and health of bee populations and other pollinators: greater flower availability can support higher survival and reproduction rates, while flower-poor areas can become bottlenecks for insect biodiversity.
Finally, the authors suggest that similar approaches could be adapted to other fruit trees and flowering plants, paving the way for a new generation of quantitative tools to monitor ecological resources and support pollinator conservation strategies at a time when their protection is increasingly critical.
Brohimer and Caine tackled that question with two different data sets for FOB prices, and they got two different answers. One set used USDA data, which is voluntarily reported, and another used an internal set representing significant Washington volume.
Both showed a dip in mid-June, when shippers had dropped prices but retailers — on average — hadn’t caught up. After July 4, the USDA data set continued to show a disconnect between the USDA-reported FOBs and retail pricing, while the industry FOB data showed both prices began moving in sync again.
In a follow-up interview, Brohimer said he thinks both scenarios are likely true, with variations between them, depending on the retailer. Separately, the price elasticity analysis provides the foundation for the claim that there’s room to raise prices without sacrificing volume, Caine said.
Price elasticity models usually assume no supply constraints — if demand for widgets is high, just make more widgets. But the sweet cherry season is constrained by climate and cultivar, leading to low volume at the beginning and the end of the season.
Immagine 2. Brian Focht, secondo da destra, sottolinea l'importanza dell'esecuzione in negozio per rendere le ciliegie visibili ai consumatori che acquistano d'impulso. Insieme a lui in questo panel, da sinistra, Bryan Peebles, Tate Mathison e Welcome Sauer. (TJ Mullinax/Good Fruit Grower)
In those windows, prices are typically higher because the availability of cherries is limited. A standard price elasticity model interprets those periods as a sign that high prices resulted in low volumes, Caine said.
Looking at a season-long analysis, it appears high prices suppress sales volume, but that actually tangles up cause and effect. In a different approach, Caine examined just the midseason period with an ample supply of cherries, and he found a much lower price sensitivity, sitting at 0.37.
For context, an average produce price sensitivity hits at a little less than 1.0, and the standard model put cherries at 1.56 — much higher than average.
A lower price sensitivity means retailers can also make more money by raising prices, Caine and Brohimer said, which also benefits growers and shippers. To test that theory, they also broke down data on cherry pricing by retail chain and found no volume trend with average prices ranging from $2.95 (€2.71) to $4.60 (€4.23). “So, it’s not just a price play,” Brohimer said.
That aligns with what the industry already knows: 70 percent of consumers say they buy cherries on impulse. Ads generate both visibility and a price reduction, but Brohimer said it’s the visibility doing the work.
“We need to promote for the impulse, not to drive down the price,” he said. “It’s what’s going on in stores that matters.”
On the importance of store execution, the cherry sales and marketing leaders who spoke on a panel after the keynote agreed.
“If you’re at $4.22 (€3.88) in the back of the store, where people can’t see the fruit, and you drop that price to $3.49 (€3.21), you are not going to move any additional product,” said Brian Focht, manager of the Northwest Cherry Marketing Association.
“And that’s one of the traps I think we got caught in this year with the high prices out of California.”
Focht was joined by Tate Mathison, vice president of sales at Stemilt Growers; Bryan Peebles, export sales manager at Chelan Fresh and a grower himself; and Welcome Sauer, a retired industry executive who recently completed his own analysis of the cherry market.
A note: I moderated the panel, as Good Fruit Grower is published by the Washington State Fruit Commission and helps to organize the Cherry Institute. So, consider the panel live journalism, and this the recap.
Mathison also started his diagnosis of the 2025 challenges with California’s short crop. Often, California sets the stage for a robust start to the Northwest crop; this year it was the opposite.
As retailers ran low on cherries to promote in early June, they pulled back on display space, and it took the entire month of June to recover.
“When the industry ships 300,000 to 400,000 boxes a day, there’s a whole new set of store strategies that need to happen in order to get that (fruit) through the supply chain,” Mathison said. That’s why crop estimates are so important, he added.
California — where Stemilt also grows cherries — didn’t release an estimate in 2025.
“If the retailer doesn’t know that there’s a large crop or small crop coming, they will make the plans that they made last year, or they’ll make ill-advised or unadvised plans,” Mathison said.
If they are uncertain about the supply of cherries, they’ll just give more space to watermelons or strawberries, he said. Sauer also spoke about retail margins. Margins of 50 percent — as Brohimer showed in his presentation — are typical across retail, he said.
But in Sauer’s analysis, which he provided in depth at the Washington State Tree Fruit Association Annual Meeting in December, he found that during the July peak, retailers dropped margins toward the 30 percent range to help move fruit.
“The retailers came to bat. They promoted heavily,” Sauer said. “They sacrifice some of that margin, but they make it up in volume.” Peebles urged the industry to remember how the retail market is changing.
Cherries are one of the last truly seasonal fruits. More and more groceries are purchased online every year. And cherry growers from California to Canada have stepped up their game with new varieties and higher quality.
“We have to sell an average of 225,000 boxes a week for 16 weeks from when California starts to (the) late cherry in Washington and Canada, and it’s a lot of cherries,” Peebles said. “You have to be shooting for 10-row and higher or it’s not going to pencil out.”
He encouraged growers to ask their sales and marketing desks questions about how they are navigating the changing cherry landscape. “I would tell you as a grower group, you have to be questioning what your warehouses and sales teams are doing,” he said. “We want to be challenged. We need to be challenged.”
Source images: TJ Mullinax, Good Fruit Grower
Kate Prengaman
Editor of Good Fruit Grower
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