Abstract

In order to determine the variations of fungal concentrations duiring morning and evening, fungal samples were taken tree times a month between September- November 2002. Two sampling methods were employed. Samples were taken either by gravitation method for which Petri dishes containing Rose Bengal streptomycin agar were exposed to air for 15 min. or by using a volumetric sampler. A total of 9680 colonies belonging to Alternaria (Nees), Aspergillus (Fr.:Fr.), Cladosporium (Link), Penicillium (Link), Rhizopus (Ehrenberg), Scopuloriopsis (Bainier), Trichoderma Pers, Ulocladium Preus, and to unidentified genera from Dematiaceae were observed. Of these, Cladosporium, Alternaria and Penicillium were the dominating taxa with their colonial counts 3133, 2733 and 1134 for gravitational method and 120, 149 and 4 for volumetric sampling method, respectively. We used a KolmogorovSmirnov test for the fitness of the variables to normal distribution. For morning and evening counts of the sampler method, we found a significant relationship (r = 0.489, P < 0.001) as revealed by correlation of analysis. When colonial counts of morning and evening samples of the gravitational method were compared again a significant relationship was found (r = 0.667). Morning and evening counts of both methods were analysed statistically (r = 0.486 and r = 0.761 respectively).