Above the wheat is a medium of soil. The depleted nature of the soil causes a large quantity of sclerotia to form, while the mycelium draws nutrients from the wheat below it. Inoculum is described as ascospores, vegative hyphae or sclerotia. Apparently, the pint jars could not be scaled up, because air must enter around the edge and diffuse into the center. The sclerotia is removed and placed in nonsterile trays with a medium such as soil and peatmoss.
Much water is percolated through.
Depletion of exogenous nutrients is emphasized as essential to inducing differentiation. Maintaining complex environmental conditions is critical to preventing abortion of growth. In other words, sclerotia is not an essential part of production. They noted that the ascus mother cell contains a large number of nuclei. A pair of nuclei migrate to the tip of the ascus mother cell and fuse to form a diploid nucleus.