Im posting here to keep alive the discussion on ergot cultivation verses pill extraction. Im sure some of us would appreciate any stories about sucesses/failures in the field of cultivating the stuff.
I am well aware of the dangers of losing extremities, but im more worried about the yield, and about viable ways to extract. Searching only digs up old threads by KrZ saying his cousins cat was thinking about trying it: so i hope this isnt too repetative a topic. possibly this thread can finally clear some things up.
a super intelligent chimp has been emailing me and wants to try an extraction but needs support from the bees.

have u got the M.V.psychedelic chemistry off Rhodiums site? this explains how to work up from ergot etc and create the drug we all strive for.....! How r u gettin the ergot?like i have said before this shit grows wild and i have had it in my hand (gloves on of course) i tried to grow it but the little buggers would not grow! oh well.good luck anyway.

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Talk to me munky.
Munky.
Talk to me!

I think that it may be difficult to obtain good quantities of lysergic acid precursors by surface culturing ergot. Before the discovery of an ergot species/strain that would produce alkaloids during submerged culture; ergot was hand picked from (deliberately?) contaminated fields. Collecting ergot was an occupation for schoolchildren.

Ergot species do seem to be common in much of the world, growing on the seed heads of grasses and grains. It would be an interesting hobby to become an expert on the ergot species endemic to ones locale and to put together the equipment for the microchemical extraction and identification of the ergot alkaloids.

actually i was thinking of acquiring a mutant strain high in alkaloids from an online supplier, an seeing where it goes from there. I would give more thought to collecting, but the winter months are coming up and i wouldnt want to start for a little while longer.

in the well circulated version of the agar mass production method, the following chems are required...i wonder what the uses of these chems are in the culture.
sucrose (i understand the need for this)
chick pea meal (this one too)
calcium nitrate
monopotassium phosphate
potassium chloride
ferrous sulphate heptahydrate
zinc sulphate heptahydrate
the last two have got me really confused... isnt one of those sulfuric acid? why would a growth medium need this?

Neither are sulfuric acid. Both are salts of a metal (iron and zinc) and sulfuric acid. "ferrous" means iron in a +2 oxidation state. I would guess that they are used in trace amounts as a nutrient (in human terms think "mineral suplement").

What species of ergot is it?

What is the growth habit of ergot on agar? Do you get a mat of mycelium? I have a book - The Road to Eleusis by Wasson, Ruck and Hofmann that has a few photos of ergot. One of the photos is of fruiting bodies of Claviceps purpurea, they look like tiny mushrooms, I can't tell what the substrate is but it looks like dirt.

im not so sure about the agar, probably wouldnt work.
i just have a little mush cult experience and would like to learn about ergot culturing, i know someone here has tried it and is quiet about it. pm please, cause my friends pet baboon is going to try it anyway, please pm me.
about the sulfiric acid, i looked at them in chem finder and it said a common name for both was sulfuric acid, which i thought was a little strange too...damn i wish my chem class would speed up so i could see through all this stuff...

well really im just wondering if the ferrous sulphate hep. and the other one are really necessary for the ergot to grow.

as far as the pics in eleusis, i wonder about the concentration of ergotamine in the fruiting bodies verses the black stuff on the stalks.

I once grow ergot (Claviceps purpurea from lyme grass) on malt agar (homemade) it grows werye fast. And as fair as i remeber there is a big article from 1956 abouth growing ergot (i'll look it op). They grows 3-4 generations of ergot and select the most pink one (just by colour) each time. They end up with 2g isolatet LSA from one liter wather

much appreciated, hest, i figured someone here could help me out.

could you PM me the details on that malt agar pls. could you also post me that article.

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Talk to me munky.
Munky.
Talk to me!

The species used mostly used for production of lysergic acid amide seems to be Claviceps paspali, whereas Claviceps purpurea is used for production of ergotamine.

I read an article on selection of strains for high alkaloid production in submerged culture. I think they succeeded in finding high-yielding strains (3 grams per liter), but these reverted to lower-yielding strains after a few "generations" or something like that.

How much ergotamine can one expect to extract from, say, 30g of ergot sclerotia?

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please share chemical sources with me via p.m.

Interesting facts from an article from 1975:

"The current annual production of ergot alkaloids is estimated at 4000 kg of peptide alkaloids and in excess of 12000 kg of lysergic acid. Lysergic acid presently sells at between $3000 and $4000 per kg."

I wonder how you get a license to manufacture "pharmaceutical intermediates" like lysergic acid.

"How do you account for those missing 100 grams of ergotamine?"

"Unfortunately, I dropped a beakerfull into a sink with running water."

It was just a 'plain' malt agar, made form malt sirup, malt and agar, i do not have the recipie annyemore.
The name of the athour is F.Arcamone, I think it is from 1962/1963 but i'm not sure, ill try to look it up to night.

F.Acramone ..... Nature 187, 238 (1960)
F.Acramone ..... Proc. Roy. Soc. Ser.B 155 26 (1961) (the best one)
H.Kolbe .... Helvetica Chimica Acta 47 1052 (1964)

Is it time for this room to start a lyserg.acid. project

hest, such an undertaking would be illegal, so we cant do that.
however my imaginary cat thinks it is about time for this. she also thinks it would be good help for other imaginary cats to share experiences with lsd manufacture, as i am reasonably sure that somebee here has tried to make this damn chem, and has joined the ranks of hippie cooks who stay quiet so us youngins wont fry ourselves.
hest thanks for the sources

It is not illegal in my part of the world:-).
I will start growing some claviseps, and see if the collour seperation is posible. Hope somone will join.

whatever country this is, im going to backpack my way there if I have to.

I'm not into tryptamine dreams, but I had a friend long ago who grew ergoit on homebrew agar.  If I remember correcvtly, the best results came not from surface cultures, but from a more or less uniform mix of his ergot biomaterial with the agar.  The ergot deposited in the lower levels of the agar did not grow, however the upper 1/4 seemed to grow fine.  The surface of the agar would become bubbly and such as the ergot (which looked to me like a mat with little fingers or nubs sticking out) pushed it's way out from underneath.  Don't ask me for details on extraction, this really was a friend

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blah blah blah something clever blah blah blah