Last year, Dick Beighle harvested exactly 0 percent of his Lambert cherrycrop. With a glut on the market, he figured it would be cheaper to take a total loss than to pay the high processing prices to sell them.

He wasn't alone, either. In 2009, Montana sweet cherry growers produced a total of 2,390 tons of fruit, up 53 percent from 2008, according to USDA records. Of that massive amount, only 1,055 tons were utilized on the market.

The over-abundance of fruit combined with the recession drove prices down. The average price for the 2009 crop dropped to $1,490 per ton from $2,730 per ton in 2008.

That meant a drop in revenue from $4 million in 2008 to just $1.6 million in 2009 for the Montana crop.Or no revenue, in Beighle's case."The people who relied totally on Lamberts, like us, got stuck with it," he said. It's a big reason he signed on to participate in a five-year study on new varieties for the Flathead Valley."This is the first step for new opportunities to expand the industry," said Patricia McGlynn, the Montana State University extension agent for Flathead County who is leading the study. Many Flathead cherry growers, especially those involved in the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative, rely on the Washington market to sell their cherries. Traditionally, cherries grown here around the lake are harvested a few weeks after those grown in theWashington and Oregon markets, giving the local orchards an edge.Recently, however, cherry producers inWashington have taken to keeping the same schedule as the Flathead crop. It's exactly what happened last year,said Dale Nelson, president of Flathead Lake Cherry Growers. Washington harvested a record-breaking crop two weeks late, at exactly the same time growers in the Flathead Valley were trying to pick their own bumpercrops.

THE MONSON Fruit Company in Selah, Wash., processes about 80 percent of the Flathead's cherry harvest. Its priority, though, is to process cherries grown within its own state. Lastyear, its need for Flathead cherries wasslim.

That's why Gerald and Marilyn Bowman of Bowman Orchard went to McGlynn for help. Their orchard has been producing cherries since the 1920s, but last year was particularly hard. Their request for help, along with several others, inspired the new variety study.

The MSU Extension study is the only public research currently being conducted to support the Montana cherry industry, McGlynn said. Dr. Matt Whiting, lead cherry scientist at WashingtonState University, has been hired as aconsultant to help oversee the study. The goal is to find varieties that will ripen even later in the season than the traditional Lamberts, extending the harvest season well beyond that of Washington and other Northwest cherry producers.

"You either want to be the first or the last guy," Nelson said. The study will cost about $200,000 to conduct. So far, McGlynn has been ableto secure two Montana Department of Agriculture grants, one for $9,912 from the Growth Through Agriculture program and an additional $14,600 from the Cherry Marketing and Research program. These funds will get thestudy off the ground and pay for the first year of analysis.McGlynn has applied for an additional $29,000 to fund the following two years. Another $150,000 in matched funds will fill in the final two years of testing.

Utilizing test plots on six orchards around the valley, five varieties of cherries from British Columbia, Washington and New York are being tested for hardiness, disease and insect resistance,size, flavor and harvest timing. There are a total of 264 new trees planted in research plots, 44 on each of six sites; eight of each of the five new varieties plus pollinators.