Aerobiology methods - scientific and technological progress

As a science, aerobiology emerged ninety years ago. Over the years many techniques have been developed to explore the diversity of fungal spores and pollen grains in atmospheric air. Currently, the most common are the Hirst type samplers. Slowly but surely a new era of automatic devices with the possibility of obtaining real-time results begins. They are particulary important in our time, when one-third of the world urban population suffers from allergies to pollen. This review explores the current understanding of the significance of the pollen and fungal spores monitoring, in relation to advances and limitations of the old and the new sampling techniques as well as the present sampling techniques and present knowledge of the molecular aspects of pollen allergens. Pollen and fungal spores monitoring promises to be a valuable tool for examination of the interface between multidisciplinary approaches, allowing us to understand the heterogeneity of nature from the pollen aerosol physics to the molecular and omical aspects of the pollen allergens characteristics and their interaction with our immune system both in health and disease. Thanks to the aerobiological research, using chemical, biochemical and microbiological analysis with metorological and satellite data, we provide the evidence of the long distance transport of the pollen and spore, their impact on the spread of viruses and bacteria and connections to other phenomena.