New tree tap adds weeks to syrup season

WILLIAMSTOWN, Vt. (AP) — It's 2 inches tall, costs about 35 cents and looks like a tiny rocket ship.

But it has big potential: Scientists at the University of Vermont who developed a new maple spout adapter say it could revolutionize the syrup industry, extending the annual harvest by weeks and boosting sap yields by up to 90 percent per tree.

"This is one of the biggest leaps in tubing technology in a long, long time," said Bruce Bascom, a maple sugar maker in Alstead, N.H.

The tiny nylon device, which has been in development for two years and was unveiled publicly Monday, works with vacuum tubing systems used by most maple sugar producers by inhibiting the reverse flow of sap into trees that occurs when pumps are shut off or holes develop in the tubing.

Typically, when a vacuum system is shut off, the maple tree reflexively begins to suck sap back in from tubing, sometimes carrying bacteria. Once the trees detects them, it begins to wall off the tap hole, stopping sap production.

The new device — developed by Timothy Perkins, director of the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center, in conjunction with maple industry supplier Leader Evaporator Co. — uses a valve — a small ball that rolls to and fro in a chamber inside the spout — to block backflow.

"By using a check valve in the system to prevent sap from moving backward into the tree, then the microorganisms don't get into the tap hole, the tap hole stays cleaner and the sap will continue running longer in the season," Perkins said.

Tests found it ran for about a week to three weeks longer than usual and produced 50 to 90 percent more sap from the same tap hole, he said.

Extending the normal six-week season by a few weeks may not be as lucrative as it sounds, though. Maple trees produce some of their sweetest sap at the beginning of the season, so increasing the amount of sap at the end of the season may not equate to big increases in syrup production, Bascom said.

It's also not clear whether the device will make it cheaper to put pure maple syrup on the breakfast table. Retail prices soared last winter to $60 per gallon because of low production and high global demand. A banner year in 2009 — U.S. sugar makers produced 2.3 million gallons last winter, the most in at least 65 years — didn't drive prices back down.

It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of maple syrup. Nationally, there are about 50 million taps. Canada is the leading producer of maple syrup by far, accounting for more than 80 percent of the world's supply.

Historically, maple sugar producers hung steel buckets on tree taps, and then carried the buckets to a sugarhouse to be boiled into syrup in giant stainless steel evaporators. But since the 1960s, the development of vacuum tubing has mechanized the process and boosted sap yield, so most sugar makers do it that way.