Unless you want to experiment with just doing a bunch of PDA transfers I recommend you get a good strain not a wild one. The bare minimum for doing ANY work with these strains is to fruit the ergot sclerotia and produce sexual spores. It is a total bitch but it can be done, just get fresh ergot samples, a sterile enviornment which is cold and humid blah blah The conidia the ergot scleortia normally produces and the tissue in the sclerotia itself are genetically the same. To get higher producers you need sexual spores and then a lot of work, period. Good luck if you think mutagenesis will help any with this.