To many a sentimental Canadian, maple syrup evokes scenes of towering maple trees in quiet forests, the drip-drip of sap into metal buckets and steamy sugar shacks where sap is boiled into the golden nectar we drizzle on everything from pancakes to salmon.

But that notion of the iconic sugar bush could soon be joined by a radically different landscape, thanks to a discovery by Vermont researchers.

Picture this: plantations featuring row upon row of saplings, tops cut off and fitted with caps to suction sap from their stems.

It’s a revolutionary new process the researchers say could boost syrup yields at a much faster pace and one day be a viable alternative for certain producers.

“This is very, very different from standard methods,” says Tim Perkins, research professor and director of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center, who developed it with colleague Abby van den Berg.

“It would allow producers to fairly rapidly increase production, but not have to go out and buy a lot more land to do it.”

Maple trees are typically tapped once they are full grown at 35 to 40 years old. A standard maple sugar operation might have 80 mature trees per hectare and produce an average of 150 gallons of maple syrup.

But a plantation of 6,000 saplings per hectare, which could start producing as soon as seven years after planting, might make 10 times that amount, the researchers predict.

Still, they are treading carefully in an industry steeped in tradition, where you can find producers managing the same forests cared for by their great-great grandparents.

Perkins stresses that he doesn’t expect maple syrup-makers to run out and cut down their mature trees to convert to this new method. But it may be an important option for supplementing existing operations, or to generate income from old farmland or existing lots of saplings.

It could also be an alternative when existing forests have been damaged in storms or by pests like Asian long-horned beetles.

“It’s not something we’re thinking should take over the maple world,” says Perkins. “We think of it as a tool producers can use if the circumstances are right for them.”

He and van den Berg, who’ve been working on the process for four years, first went public with it last October at a meeting of maple syrup makers in Moncton, where it was greeted “with a mixture of intrigue and skepticism,” says forestry expert Chris Dickie, one of the conference organizers.

They’ve given five presentations since, which rippled through the maple syrup world, though the “sap cap” device they invented to extract sap from sapling stems won’t be available until 2016 at the earliest. The research centre has applied for an international patent.

It’s hardly surprising that the innovation would be greeted with raised eyebrows in a business with such a quaint and sentimental history. Not only is maple syrup a national symbol in Canada, it’s also a hot commodity that was recently at the heart of an $18-million heist in Quebec — soon to be the subject of a motion picture.

The plantation approach “is a complete departure,” says Dickie, executive director of Infor in Fredericton, which works with the province on forest management. He says while it might one day be used in certain regions like southern Ontario where land is expensive and maple forests are scarce, he doesn’t see a future for it in New Brunswick, where producers tap trees on Crown land and there is no shortage of mature trees.

Ontario producer Ray Bonenberg, who has been making maple syrup all his life, doubts a revolution is on the way.

“If people think they’re going to plant a plantation and make a pile of money they’re sadly mistaken in my view,” says Bonenberg, president of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association and owner of Mapleside Sugar Bush in Pembroke, Ont., which runs about 1,400 taps each season.

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Like many producers, he has a small sapling stand and says it might make sense to try there for a bit of supplemental income. But he believes the yield would be limited, and so would the lifespan of saplings subjected to the process.

The University of Vermont discovery goes back to 2010 when Perkins and van den Berg chopped the top off a maple sapling in order to study sap flow and the vacuum systems commonly used to increase it.

After the spring thaw they noticed something unexpected. Conventional wisdom is that sap depends on moisture flowing down from the crown of a maple tree. Yet the sap from the topless tree, flowing from its stem into a sealed plastic bag, kept running. And running. It continued long past the point of depleting its own moisture supply. Their conclusion: the process was pulling moisture up from the ground through the tree roots, picking up the sugar in its trunk and travelling out the stem.

The discovery caused “quite a lot of excitement,” says Perkins. “So we started to discuss what kind of implications this could have.”

Costs of production would be comparable to existing sugar bushes, he says, with the higher yields offset by higher costs of equipment and labour for many more trees.

“But if you have to start buying land to increase sugar operation, this method is far cheaper because it requires one-tenth a fraction of the acreage.”

As growers develop stocks of sweeter seedlings, that could boost the potential further.

There could be other advantages for an industry at the mercy of Mother Nature. Syrup production in mature forests depends on freeze-thaw cycles to create sap flow and on deep freezes to convert the starch in root systems into sugar needed for sweet sap.

Using the researchers’ vacuum pressure technique, the saplings wouldn’t need the same stimulus to make sap flow. And their smaller root systems freeze more quickly, making them less vulnerable to the effects of warmer winters caused by climate change.

The process could also be applied to other trees with sweet sap such as birch, walnut or palm.

While some in the industry say the plantation approach faces an uphill battle, Perkins notes it’s an evolving business. The old pails have given way to networks of plastic tubing from trees, vacuum pressure is used to extract sap, and reverse osmosis has shortened the lengthy process of boiling sap into syrup.

The days of farmers in flannel shirts collecting sap with horses and wooden pails are pretty much gone, said Perkins, although some old-fashion sugar bushes remain for tourists and school kids .