colored spouts

[nhdog]

With the different colored spouts that are now available, I'm wondering what effect, if any, do the various colors have on sap flow?

[Brian]

cdl color spouts are to tell who taped what. Each person tapping get a diffrent color spout that way they know who tapped what. I don't know about the sap flow.

[DrTimPerkins]

Spout color has some impact on yield, but it varies considerably from year to year depending on the weather. Overall there isn't any good recommendation that can be made (without knowing the detailed weather). About the best we can say is if you have a cold bush, use dark spouts. For warm bushes, use light-colored spouts.
https://mapleresearch.org/pub/spoutcolor-2/

As for the new, multi-color spouts...as Brian notes, they are mostly for larger producers to keep track of who on the crew tapped particular areas. They do have slightly different thermal properties (see figure below, top is normal image, bottom is thermal IR image), however the effects on sap yield are likely modest and have not been studied.

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