Can You Remove Ergot from Wheat? What Farmers, Elevators, and Processors Need to Know
By Loraas Custom Sorting
Harvest is moving along, the trucks are rolling, and everything looks good—until the grain sample comes back.
"Your wheat has ergot."
It's one of the most common calls we receive during wheat harvest.
The first question is almost always the same:
"Can it be cleaned?"
The answer, in most cases, is yes.
Modern grain conditioning equipment—especially optical color sorters—is extremely effective at removing ergot from wheat. In fact, ergot is one of the contaminants that optical color sorting is particularly well suited to separate because the ergot bodies are usually much different in color, shape, and appearance than healthy wheat kernels.
The more important question isn't whether the machine can remove ergot.
The real question is:
"Can the cleaned grain meet my buyer's specifications?"
Those are two very different questions.
At Loraas Custom Sorting, we've worked with producers, grain elevators, processors, and seed companies facing ergot contamination. Every grain lot is different, but understanding how ergot develops—and how modern conditioning equipment works—helps explain why successful cleaning is about much more than simply running grain through a machine.
What Is Ergot?
Ergot is a fungal disease caused primarily by Claviceps purpurea. Instead of producing a healthy wheat kernel, the infected flower develops a hard fungal structure called a sclerotium, commonly referred to as an ergot body.
Ergot bodies are usually easy to recognize.
They are often:
Dark purple to black
Longer than a wheat kernel
Curved or irregular in shape
Hard and dense
Although this article focuses on wheat, ergot can also infect rye, barley, triticale, oats, and many grass species.
Unlike cracked kernels or weather damage, ergot is more than a quality issue. Ergot bodies can contain naturally occurring alkaloids that may be harmful to humans and livestock if present above acceptable levels. Because of this, flour mills, grain elevators, exporters, feed manufacturers, and other buyers often have strict limits on the amount of ergot they will accept.
How Does Ergot Develop?
Ergot begins long before the combine enters the field.
The fungus infects the wheat flower during pollination, most often when cool, wet weather favors disease development. Rather than allowing a normal kernel to form, the fungus replaces it with an ergot body.
By the time harvest arrives, the damage has already occurred.
No piece of grain cleaning equipment can turn an ergot body back into a healthy wheat kernel.
What grain conditioning can do is separate those ergot bodies from the healthy wheat that surrounds them.
That distinction is important.
Grain conditioning doesn't repair grain.
It separates grain.
Why Buyers Take Ergot So Seriously
Every buyer has one goal: delivering grain that performs as expected.
Whether the wheat is going to a flour mill, food processor, export terminal, or seed facility, quality specifications exist for a reason.
Because ergot contains toxic alkaloids, buyers often establish acceptance limits based on the intended use of the grain. If those limits are exceeded, the grain may receive a discount, require reconditioning, or be rejected altogether.
Some buyers have slightly more flexibility than others.
Some grain elevators may have limited opportunities to blend conditioned grain into larger inventories while still meeting customer specifications.
Others—particularly flour mills, export customers, or specialty processors—may have little or no flexibility at all.
That's why understanding the final destination of the grain is just as important as understanding the contamination itself.
Can Ergot Be Removed?
In the vast majority of situations, yes.
Ergot is actually one of the contaminants that optical color sorters are exceptionally good at identifying.
Unlike many grain quality problems that affect every kernel equally, ergot bodies are separate objects mixed within the grain. They are usually darker, larger, and visually different than healthy wheat kernels.
Those differences make them excellent candidates for optical sorting.
A properly configured grain conditioning system using screening, gravity separation when appropriate, and optical color sorting can typically remove the overwhelming majority of ergot bodies from a wheat sample.
The challenge usually isn't whether the machine can identify the ergot.
The challenge is determining whether the cleaned wheat will meet the acceptance requirements for the market it's headed to.
That's an important distinction.
If your buyer allows only a very small amount of ergot, the cleaning process must recover as much good wheat as possible while reducing contamination to meet that specification.
Every grain lot is different, and every buyer's requirements are different.
Why One Machine Isn't the Whole Answer
Many people picture grain cleaning as one machine doing all the work.
In reality, successful wheat conditioning often involves several pieces of equipment, each performing a different job.
Screening
The first step is often screening.
Screens remove oversized and undersized material based on size.
Depending on the grain sample, some larger ergot bodies may be removed during this stage along with other foreign material.
However, ergot bodies vary considerably in size.
Some are much larger than wheat kernels.
Others are surprisingly similar.
That's why screening alone is rarely the complete solution.
Aspiration
Aspiration removes lightweight dust, chaff, and fine plant material using controlled airflow.
While aspiration improves overall grain cleanliness, it is generally not the primary method for removing ergot.
Instead, it prepares the grain for the next stages of conditioning.
Gravity Separation
Gravity tables separate grain according to density.
Because ergot bodies often differ in density from healthy wheat kernels, gravity separation can improve the conditioning process by removing additional contaminants that screening cannot separate effectively.
Gravity tables have been used in wheat conditioning systems for decades because density differences often reveal quality differences that screens alone cannot detect.
Optical Color Sorting
This is where modern grain conditioning truly shines.
Optical color sorters inspect every individual kernel using high-speed cameras and specialized lighting.
As each kernel falls through the inspection area, sophisticated software compares it against programmed quality standards.
When the system identifies an ergot body, precisely timed bursts of compressed air eject it from the product stream while allowing healthy wheat to continue through the machine.
This entire process happens thousands of times every second.
Because ergot is usually so visually distinct from healthy wheat, optical color sorting is one of the most effective technologies available for removing it.
Does a Color Sorter Remove Every Ergot Body?
This is probably the most common follow-up question we receive.
The honest answer is this:
A properly adjusted optical color sorter can remove nearly all of the ergot present in many wheat samples.
However, no responsible company should promise that every single ergot body will be removed from every truckload or every semi.
Consider how many kernels are in a semi-load of wheat.
You're dealing with millions of individual kernels moving through the machine at high speed.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is to reduce the ergot level enough for the grain to meet the customer's market specification while recovering as much good wheat as possible.
In our experience, the machine's ability to identify ergot is rarely the limiting factor.
More often, the limiting factor is the specification established by the buyer.
Some markets have extremely low tolerance levels.
Others allow limited blending opportunities.
Understanding those requirements before the job begins helps determine the most practical conditioning strategy.
Is It Worth Cleaning?
In many cases, absolutely.
Imagine two different situations.
In the first, a producer has high-quality wheat that narrowly exceeds the buyer's ergot specification.
Conditioning that grain may allow it to qualify for a higher-value market while recovering the majority of the wheat.
In the second, a grain lot contains heavy ergot contamination throughout.
Cleaning may still remove a tremendous amount of ergot, but the economics depend on how much marketable wheat can ultimately be recovered and whether the final specifications can be achieved.
Every project should be evaluated individually.
Questions we typically ask include:
What crop is involved?
Approximately how many bushels need conditioning?
Has the grain been sampled?
Do you know the approximate level of ergot?
Where is the grain going?
What quality specifications must it meet?
Those answers help determine the most practical and economical solution.
Can Ergot Be Prevented?
While no growing season is identical, good crop management can help reduce the likelihood of future ergot problems.
University extension specialists commonly recommend practices such as:
Planting high-quality seed.
Managing grassy weeds that may serve as hosts.
Rotating crops where practical.
Selecting adapted varieties.
Monitoring fields during flowering.
Harvesting heavily infected areas separately when possible.
Unfortunately, once ergot bodies are present in harvested grain, they cannot be turned back into healthy kernels.
Post-harvest conditioning focuses on separating them from the wheat—not repairing them.
Experience Matters
Owning a color sorter is only part of the equation.
Successful ergot removal also depends on proper machine setup, feed rates, product presentation, screen selection, air settings, gravity adjustments, and optical sorter calibration.
Small adjustments can influence both grain recovery and cleaning performance.
That's why operator experience is just as important as the equipment itself.
At Loraas Custom Sorting, every grain lot is evaluated individually. Our goal isn't simply to clean grain—it's to help customers recover the highest-quality wheat possible while working toward the specifications required by their market.
If you've discovered ergot in your wheat, don't assume the grain has lost its value.
Modern grain conditioning and optical color sorting can often remove the overwhelming majority of ergot bodies, giving producers and grain handlers an opportunity to improve the quality of the grain before it reaches its final destination.
The first step is understanding the grain.
The second is choosing the right conditioning process.
And that's exactly where experience makes the difference.