Manual and automatic quantification of airborne fungal spores during wheat harvest period

Due to the large diversity and quantity of fungal spores, such aerobiological studies are not so abundant and haven’t been done in Serbia so far. As the Pannonian plain is listed as a source of fungal spores all around Europe, our study aimed to describe the aerobiological characteristics of airborne fungal spores measured in location representative for the Pannonian plain during the wheat harvest period and to evaluate automatic bioaerosol monitoring for quantification of total airborne fungal spores. The study revealed that Cladosporium, Alternaria, and Coprinus accounted for over 90% of the total fungal spores count. The relation to meteorology confirmed a distinction between “dry” and “wet” spores and their diurnal cycles, as Ganoderma and Coprinus peaked around dawn, and Alternaria and Cladosporium peaks correlated with daily peaks of temperature and relative humidity. Automatically quantified daily concentrations of total airborne fungal spores showed a statistically significant positive correlation (Pearson r = 0.55, p < 0.01) to values obtained from the manual Hirst method. The same correlations were found for total pollen (Pearson r = 0.60, p < 0.01) and starch granules (Spearman r = 0.80, p < 0.01). A low intensity of fluorescence measurements for fungal spores requires a separate automatic detection from pollen and indicates the need for a good quality training dataset. Thus, Hirst-type measurements provide an essential model for classifying bioaerosols with artificial intelligence.