Last weekend I went to a very rural place for a wedding and I had a lot of time to think on the 8 hour car ride staring at golden fields of cereal and giant concrete grain elevators. This is what I came up with.
100 acres of well irrigated flat field located somewhere in Northern Idaho, Washington or Montana which has the highest rates of ergot infection on cereal crops in North America post 2010.
http://www.agcanada.com/wp-content/u.../GNN131112.pdfThe field will be seeded with genetically modified ergot
Susceptible Rye. Seeds could be sourced or stolen from Switzerland (Sandoz), Germany (Boehringer Ingelheim) or China (Zhejiang Chiral Medicine Chemicals Co Ltd). I could also pay a lab to modify the seeds for me. Others producers include India, Finland and Poland.
"The first successful attempts at ergot production on rye on a large scale were reported by HECKE (1922-1923). He sprayed suspensions of ascospores and of honeydew-conidia over a field with flowering rye. Good results with the spray method were only obtained when a large proportion of the rye flowers were open and when the weather conditions on the following days were optimal for spore generation. Rainfall after opening washed the spores off."
"A more reliable method for obtaining an infection involved injecting the spores inside the ears. BEKESY (1938) describes the prototype of an inoculation machine. This machine has been adapted and further developed at Sandoz Ltd. in Basel by BRACK and reported by STOLL (1942). This inoculation machine was drawn by horse and later by tractor, through the rye field. It's main part consists of 5 pairs of vertically arranged cylinders rotating in opposite directions. One cylinder of each pair is equipped with grooved needles and the other has a smooth surface and presses the rye ears against the needles. The spore suspension is directed from a 12-liter tank through pipes over the needle-bearing cylinders, thus filling the rills with inoculum. Yields under comparable conditions (as reporte by STOLL and BRACK, 1944), name an average of 361kg/ha and 386kg/ha."
As the Rye grows there will be an ergot spore culture being incubated in a 1000L bio reactor. The spore solution will be mixed with a surfactant to stick more easily to the rye. The solution will periodically be sprayed and injected into the rye crop. The best time for inoculation by injection is when the ears escape from the uppermost leaf sheath. This is about two weeks before the opening of the inflorescences. The first sclerotia appear about 1 month after inoculation and need a further 3-4 weeks to ripen. Harvest starts when the longitudinal growth ends and the sclerotia loosen between the glumes. The ,aom areas for field production were in Switzerland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The yields, averaging an estimated amount of 200kg/ha (180lb/acre) of dry ergot sclerotia, could vary on a factor of about 2.5 upwards or downwards depending on climatic or cultural conditions. Today the yields of leading producers using modified rye and enhanced ergot cultures are over 1000kg/ha.
At harvest time the grains will be harvested exactly the same as a normal rye harvest, using machinery. The grain should be of very "Low grade" with lots of black sclerotia kernals. These are normally sorted with expensive machines for infected grains which are thrown out, this cleaning process is very costly for cereal grain producers.
http://www.enormouselk.com/?q=erkkasblog/threshing-ryeErgot Sclerotia will need to be processed in a 10,000L vessel filled with low grade cheap bulk solvent. The process is described in detail in US Patent 2255124 and another patent that I thought I had but lost, I will find it again one day but I remember the basic outline of it. Instead of using water to seperate the infected rye from the non infected grains, non polar solvent is used instead of water which eliminates any possibility of alkaloid degradation and allows defatting and extraction to be done in one vessel. The ergot grain will sink to the bottom and the floating grains discarded. Petroleum Ether will be used to defat. The entire biomass can then be macerated and extracted. Ph is adjusted in the alcohol/ergot solution and alkaloids extracted. The entire biomass cis washed, enhancemented, extracted and recrystallized. The yield should be somewhere around 100kg or Ergot Salt (ET) per x acres of rye.
To convert ET to LSA the best way would be to react everything at once in one go instead of small batches to avoid allowing the salts degrading. 100kg can be reacted in 4-5 100L stain steel pharma grade industrial reactors. First the ET is hydrolysed into LSA. After that the LSA is to be reacted in a battery of 50L flasks in a room with special dark lighting. The classic peptide coupling method will be used (LSA dissolved in HATU/HOBT) which runs cold and minimizes hazardous precursors like hydrazine and diethylamine. The only drawback being high cost and difficulty sourcing reagents. The room where the LSD is being manufactured will have an industrial air purification system with a HEPA enhancement to minimize infamous "LSD dust" from tainting the work environment. The workers will wear full body protection suits with oxygen breathers and Thorazine in the bloodstream to minimize LSD poisoning. LSD is non toxic but is well known for its psychoactive properties in small amounts. No laboratory in human history has ever made this much LSD before but clandestine accounts of labs operating in the 1kg+ range report workers in a constant state of intoxication even from handling or being near equipment used in manufacture.
[FONT=Crimson Text][SIZE=19px]"Another rarely addressed factor limiting clandestine production is the unusual potency of LSD. In that specialized devices such as efficient fume hoods, anaerobic conditions, and full protective clothing with face shields and breathing apparatus are less effective or nonexistent in clandestine environments—particularly in larger labs—manufacturers have difficulty during the synthesis in preventing constant exposure to large quantities of LSD and are frequently subjected to incidental doses of 50 micrograms to many milligrams of LSD each day. LSD is absorbed through skin contact with LSD-containing solvents, through inhalation of dried particulate forms of LSD, and through ocular solution. This incidental exposure to unknown quantities of LSD as chronic and acute doses over weeks and months—together with the anxiety from fear of detection and arrest and the sense of dissociation from conducting a covert-lifestyle—all result in psychological stresses beyond that of a simple low-level LSD experience. The exposure effects are generally proportional to the size of the lab, with smaller labs having greater control over incidental LSD. Although manufacturing chemists are routinely exposed to LSD for protracted periods, a protective effect has been noted in what has been described as “saturationâ€, wherein rapid tolerance to the drug is built up in the first few days of exposure, after which the subjective experience in terms of peak effects are significantly lessened. Nevertheless, except for periodic breaks, production tends to continue through a series of batch syntheses for indefinite periods—sometimes years—until either an arrest occurs in the distribution network or of the manufacturer, or otherwise until a personal decision is made to cease activity, or there is a temporary or permanent interruption in the supply of precursors or other requirements."[/SIZE][/FONT]
https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/c...ng.agents.html-LIQUID ERGOT CULTURE-
liquid ergot culture will be produced along with wild ergot and they will be acting symbiotically towards each other. The wild ergot can be used for the liquid ergot culture and liquid ergot culture used to infect more rye.
"No special bioreactors have been constructed for ergot alkaloid production so the process has had to be adapted for the bioreactors already available. The classical tank fermenters with multiple impellers are well adapted for the propagation and production of Claviceps. Other bioreactors such as the torus fermenter can also allow efficient production."
"A strain isolated from sclerotium which grew on the grass of Agrophyum semicostatum was grown in 1.2 L batches in Bernhauer flasks for 30-40 days at 26-28C. The yield was about 500 mg/L."
After final crystallization there will be two products. Needlepoint pure LSD crystal which will be stored in opaque glass/plastic in an oxygenless deep freezer away from any source of light. The second product is Iso-LSD, removed during purification and dissolved in solvent (byproduct of LSD synthesis from LSA). This inactive compound can be sold or converted to LSD. The LSD would best be transported by refrigerated trucks. The bottles of LSD crystal will be in styrofoam boxes surrounded by dry ice and should be kept cold at all times. The crystal can be dissolved in alcohol and laid onto blotter by anyone who knows the process. It might be possible to rig a machine that can lay all the LSD solution onto 100 fett of blotters like a conveyer belt and the sheets vacuum sealed and kept in cold storage.
The entire process should take a few years per batch. 1 year to culture ergot, 1 year to grow, infect and harvest sclerotia And 1 month of working around the clock, night and day with little sleep to convert all the ergot into LSD.
