More than maple: Cornell research designs sugarbush agroforestry systems

April 10, 2025

By Krisy Gashler

Arnot Teaching and Research Forest
Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station
Natural Resources and the Environment

The Cornell Maple Program is growing 18 species of perennial fruit- and nut-bearing plants within a maple sugarbush forest. They want to help maple producers be more resilient to economic challenges and extreme weather events, and offer unique products like maple-elderberry wine and maple-hazelnut spreads.

Virtually all of the world’s maple syrup is produced in Canada, the Northeast U.S. and some upper Midwestern U.S. states, where natural conditions for maple sugaring are perfect: wet summers, cold winters and springs with fluctuating temperatures above and below freezing. The same environmental conditions that support maple trees also produce a host of fruits, nuts and berries, like pawpaws, juneberries and hazelnuts.

The Cornell Maple Program seeks to combine these natural treasures. Aaron Wightman ’97, co-director of the maple program is leading a multi-year study on growing high-value fruit and nut species within the 350-acre maple sugarbush in Cornell’s Arnot Forest. Such agroforestry systems – in which producers collect forest products and grow agricultural crops simultaneously – can increase farming efficiency and profitability, diversify crop offerings and strengthen business resilience. To support producers, the maple program is also developing and testing distinctive products like maple-elderberry wine, maple-pawpaw ice cream and maple hazelnut spreads.

“There’s been a huge increase in demand for products that are locally grown, all natural and made with ingredients that customers recognize,” Wightman said. “We wanted to develop more products from a diversified set of crops that would stand out in the marketplace, bring people to these farms and help New York maple businesses be profitable.”

Maple syrup production in New York has flourished in recent years, driven by consumer demand and improved technology (sap once collected in buckets and boiled has been replaced by forest-wide plastic tubing and reverse osmosis machines). In 2024, the state’s maple production reached 846,000 gallons, up almost 100,000 gallons from just the year before.

A tabbed maple and sap lines — The sap from sugar and red maples flows abundantly at Arnot Forest on a sunny morning in March. Photo: Anja Timm

maple syrup is flowing into a container — The finished maple syrup is flowing into a tank at the Arnot Forest maple lab. Photo: Anja Timm

A person is looking at sensors in a maple sugarbush — Aaron Wightman with the Cornell Maple Program, is making his rounds to check on equipment and sap lines in the sugarbush at Arnot Forest. Photo: Anja Timm

Over the past three years, the maple program has conducted performance trials with multiple varieties of 18 species of fruit- and nut-bearing perennial plants. They evaluated plant performance by assessing growth and vigor and documenting disease, stress and damage. Researchers chose plant crops that are known to grow well in shade, that can grow with minimal input from farmers and that would pair well with maple syrup in new products, said Ailis Clyne ’17, maple technician.

“We chose crops that should do well in these soil and climatic conditions in a Northeast forest and that are growing in popularity among more adventurous consumers,” she said.

For example, Clyne wanted to develop a maple wine that incorporated a forest-grown fruit, so she chose to pair maple with elderberry, a native fruit that grows well in the shade. Maple adds sugar and elderberry adds acids, tannins and flavor complexity – all components that consumers expect in a wine, she said. A maple hazelnut spread developed by maple program food scientist Catherine Monserrate has been especially well received among producers and consumers at farmers’ markets and maple weekends, Clyne said.

The initial three-year project found that the best-performing plants grown in the maple sugarbush were pawpaw, hazelnut, Cornelian cherry and aronia berry. Some varieties of juneberry performed well, too. Blueberries survived, but struggled with slow growth and defoliation. Raspberries and blackberries were not productive, were easily outcompeted by other species and had mortality rates upwards of 70%.

A marked Cornelian cherry sapling in the forest — This Cornelian cherry sapling is one of the many fruit and nut varieties planted within the maple sugarbush at Arnot Forest. Photo: Anja Timm

The research was funded by Federal Capacity Funds managed by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES). Established as part of President Abraham Lincoln’s land-grant university system, ag experiment stations in each state are devoted to research that improves local farming, environmental stewardship and community development. The maple program has earned another 3-year grant to continue studying their maple sugarbush agroforestry plantings and to study propagation methods for forest plants with culinary, ornamental or other value, such as bladdernut, cohosh and buckeye.

Agroforestry systems enable producers to grow more food with the same amount of land, and they help protect businesses against economically devastating crop failures by diversifying what’s being grown, Clyne said. For example, this spring’s maple harvest across New York’s Southern Tier was down by 30-50% because of drought conditions last summer and a too-warm early spring, Wightman said. Having additional crops to rely on can help producers weather bad harvests.

Growing in forests also makes crops more resilient to extreme weather and helps sequester carbon.

“In forests, extreme climate conditions are moderated for us. Droughts are moderated by leaf cover overhead and deep, rich soils that retain more moisture. Flooding is moderated because forests slow surface runoff and soil erosion,” Wightman said. “At the same time, in agroforestry systems, we’re growing perennial plants that can sequester carbon instead of releasing it, and we’re producing very high-value nutrition.”

The agroforestry project is just one of many being undertaken by the maple program:

Other projects

Resources for producers and novel maple products

The Cornell Maple Program is creating food safety training materials for producers, hosting courses for beginning maple producers, and developing other unique products, such as a maple-marshmallow spread, maple kombucha and maple skin care and bath products.

Tours and teaching

The maple program does training and tours of the maple plantings as part of its outreach mission. Last year the program undertook 77 presentations to about 1,600 maple producers. They also host student groups, such as this group from the Akwe:kon North American Indigenous residential hall community. Native people tapped maple trees for their syrup for generations before teaching the practice to European colonists.

Collecting climate and production data

Aaron Wightman checks a solar-powered sensor custom-built by Cornell maple program staff. Adam Wild, co-director of the maple program, is collaborating with partners across the U.S. and Canada to gather climate data to better understand how climate change is impacting sap production. The sensors monitor atmospheric pressure, temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture, internal tree pressure, individual tree sap flow, systemwide average sap flow per tap and sap sugar content.

Modern processing technologies

Reverse osmosis systems like this one at the Cornell maple lab, are now commonly used by producers. The maple program is also testing new sap filtration technology to improve process efficiency, research that’s especially important in a warming climate because sap becomes clouded with microbes and biomatter when it’s too warm. To further help preserve sap quality and extend the life of plastic tubing Wightman tests sap tubing sanitation methods.

A bottle of syrup by the Cornell Maple Program

A group of students are standing around a maple tree with tab lines

Aaron Wightman is checking the climate sensor

Wightman’s ambition in supporting New York maple growers comes from his desire to help rebuild communities and livelihoods in rural areas.

“Rural America is just decimated: A lot of the small farms around here have been trying to scratch out a living on these hillside farms with depleted soils, and that’s a tough fight,” he said. “But the resource base is there. We have all these highly productive forests, good markets close by and consumers interested in buying locally. I think we have the possibility of an agricultural revival in New York state that will help our rural communities and contribute real food value.”

Krisy Gashler is a freelance writer for the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station.