POPULATION DYNAMICS OF AEROMYCOFLORA AT THREE SITES OF RAWALPINDI BY EVALUATING TWO SAMPLING METHODS

Abstract

The air borne mycoflora of three sites (PMAS-AAUR, Adyalla and Sohan village) were studied with main emphasis on its occurrence, density, diversity for three consecutive years, by employing  bioaerosol sampling method, (All glass impinger )  and Gravimetric plate culture plate method ) on four media. A total of 20,409 fungal spores belonging to  fifteen genera viz. Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Curvularia, Drechslera, Epicocum, Fusarium, Mucor, Rhizopus, Penicillium, Geotrichum, Epicocum and Helminthosporium ,Stemphylium, Stachybotrys  and Trichoderma species were recovered. Out of fifteen genera the highest relative contribution was attributed to Aspergillus with 16.73% of total fungal spore count, followed by Alternaria, Cladosporium, Mucor and Penicillium with 15.83, 13.79, 10.71 and 9.39 percent share respectively.  Fuasrium with 0.33% contribution in the total fungal spore count was established as the lowest in occurrence followed by Stachybotrys (0.62%), Helminthosporium (0.85%) and Geotrichum (0.85%). There was a significant difference between the efficiency of two methods i.e. Gravimetric Plate (GPM) and All Glass Impinger (AGI) in trapping individual spore type as well as mean concentration of all fungal spores during three years of the study. The Gravimetric Plate Method was found outrival and statistically significant than AGI in capturing all sixteen types of airborne fungal spores were  calculated t value for each fungal genera was much elevated than critical value of t (2.131) at 5% level of significance (P≤ 0.05). In conclusion, a range of fungal spores were present throughout the year and the land use type may vary likely have an impact on the course of spore occurrence. Thus present information would help to identifying the fungal infection by employing Gravimetric plate method.