"A jolt for the science behind harvesting maple sap; Scientists find way to harvest without taps or buckets or, even, what you’d call trees" by Colin Nickerson | Globe Correspondent, March 02, 2014
UNDERHILL, Vt. — Scientists at a research lab deep in the maple woods of northern Vermont have made a discovery that could revolutionize New England’s most tradition-steeped form of agriculture. But their work may also threaten a cherished way of life.
Experiments at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center show that maple sap — the raw material that sugar makers boil into syrup — can be efficiently vacuumed from the decapitated trunks of saplings, sharply increasing syrup production. That’s a radical departure from the centuries-old practice of inserting a small tap a few feet above the base of a mature tree, relying on the force of gravity and internal pressure to draw off the sap.
Instead of tapping big trees in a forest setting, the new technique would use juvenile trees grown in tight crop-style rows, like grapevines or Christmas trees.
The research has generated giant buzz across the so-called syrup belt, a swath of 10 states stretching from Wisconsin to Maine, plus four Canadian provinces, where the end of winter brings a short stretch — usually only a month or so — of the freezing nights and mild days that force the sap to flow.
The new technique could give sugar makers a hedge against global warming, which is already blamed for reducing the duration of sugar season by 10 percent during the past 50 years....
That's where I cut off the flow off sap. You are free to open the spigot if you wish, readers.
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Related: Proof of power of innovation: Maple sap sweetened by science
I live here and yet I rarely eat the stuff.
Also see (same day, same paper):
‘‘Extremism is always a dangerous thing, especially when it’s in the hands of a small group of people with a lot of money.’’
Oh I agree, and why did AmeriKan politics just flash into mind?!
See:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
About as sour as the $ap gets!
