September 1, 2023 - 2:41pm
Ergot in Rye?
Good afternoon all,
We planted two acres of rye this past year and just finished harvesting. I noticed *very* few ergot in the bins as we finished up. We took the time to clean out whatever we found but I am worried about it potentially contaminating all of it. I have read about 20% brine solutions being used to float the sclerotia to the top in order to separate it. I am sure that it gets harvested alongside healthy grains in a commercial operation, so I doubt it will contaminate anything...but would rather be safe than sorry. Any thoughts? Ideas? Thanks!!!!!
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When dealing with ergot, or a potential contamination, best to ask an expert! Don't seek advice from someone who isn't a professional.
I understand you wish to hear an answer that makes life easier and it is human nature to keep on asking till we get the answer we want but better safe than sorry.
Don't mess around with ergot. So unless someone here is a farmer/biologist/microbiologist and can answer your question with 100% certainty then don't be content with their answer.
Some fantastic bakers here but very few qualified when dealing with something like this. If you want advice on how to tell when a bulk ferment is done then this is the place.
One name springs to mind and that is Debra Wink but then again i'm no expert and while Debra is an expert in her field i'm not sure if this will fall under her expertise. You can always send her a message. Even if she can't answer you i'm sure she can point you in the right direction.
Be safe!
Thank you for the swift reply! I am waiting for a callback from a local organic grain grower to get their feedback on how they deal with this issue. They grow plenty of grains, including rye, so I hope they can help me out. Thanks again!
In the meantime here is Debra's profile where you can send her a private message. She is a microbiologist and i'm sure she can shed some light on this. Let us know if and how you manage to solve this problem.
Best of luck.
Thanks for the link, but I get an error message when I click on it saying I don't permission to access the page.
Needs to do something to your account to give you access.
You can email Floyd at...
floydm@thefreshloaf.com
and ask him to enable your account to send private messages. In the meantime i'll contact Debra and ask her to give you advice in this post.
Edit: Message has been sent.
You have to be signed in to access this page.
Just got a message from Debra that. She's been away from TFL for a little while and is out of the loop but here is her advice...
"After scanning the thread to get the gist, it looks like the poster is already on a good path by consulting a grain grower. Processing grain isn't in my wheelhouse, but he might also consult with his county extension agent. They can be quite helpful".
Hope this helps.
Mine is not strictly professional advice, but based on a professional paper I dug up on the internet. Having a science background, I tend to trust professional publications. The paper, "Ergot of Rye" (2000-2017) is by Gail L. Schumann, University of Massachusetts and Sai Sree Uppala, Texas A & M AgriLife Research Center, Beaumont. This is a quotation from this paper: The legal limit of ergot (by weight) is 0.3% for rye. Now, 0.3% by weight is about 1.4 g per pound. A quarter teaspoon of flour weighs roughly around 1.2 grams, so the legal limit (which is what would be allowed for a store-bought flour) for ground ergot in flour would be roughly a quarter teaspoonful per pound. Get a pound of your grain and see if you can possibly find enough ergot in there to make up a quarter teaspoonful when ground. *(V)ery* few ergot would probably not make up nearly a quarter teaspoonful, so you are very likely not any worse off than the rest of us who buy commercial rye flour.
Some other publications, e.g., this one, set the limit safe for human consumption at less than 0.5%. This would even more pronouncedly be more that "very* few ergot.
This said, I would still encourage you to seek professional advice. This is just to hopefully set your mind a bit more at ease before you actually get a professional opinion.