Besides Arcamone, almost every other researcher follows this procedure:
1) Isolate Claviceps on agar plate or test tube. After 2 weeks or so, under STERILE conditions, scrape off some mold and chop it up in small amount distilled H2O. (I use a blender, but a sterile scapel and a jar ok)
2) This is then used to innoculate the liquid culture in Shake Flasks. Innoculate 600 - 1000 ml wide mouth Erlenmyer flasks that contain 75 - 200 ml of the "starter" submerged media (See Arcamone Media formula "A"). The flasks are then place on a Rotary Shaker at 24 C., in the DARK, and shaken fairly hard for 2 - 7 days.
The Claviceps mold is VERY particular as to its needs in submerged culture as opposed to non-submerged culture. It needs HUGE amounts of O2 in the media, and unfortunately, if you don't have a Rotary Shaker, I doubt you'll be successful with submerged culture. If you check any Claviceps Patent, you'll see what I mean.
3) Once a good culture is going in the Shaker Flasks, then that can be used to innoculate larger amounts. (Arcamone Media "B") The guidelines are when scaling up is to use 6% to 10% innoculum of the size you want to scale up to; example, for my 2,000 ml bioreactor, I innoculate with 120-200 ml from Shake flasks.
Please also re-read Arcamones article carefully. You'll see that ONLY strains that produced a purple-violet color in liquid media produced any alkaloid. They made many submerged shake flask tests to isolate and re-isolate and re-isolate again purple strains.
Its easy to just grow Claviceps - not so easy to grow AND get alkaloids....
