Antonio Picornell Rodríguez

University of Malaga | UMA · Department of Botany and Plant Physiology

Olives are one of the most economically relevant crops in the Mediterranean area but this region is experiencing a strong warming due to climate change. Therefore, it would be of great interest to estimate the possible implications of climate change on olive flowering timing by modelling its thermal requirements, and aerobiological records have pro...

Airborne pollen concentrations are influenced by wind direction, wind speed, temperature and rainfall among other meteorological variables, but they are conditioned by local land use. Combining land use and wind frequencies within a single variable would allow the estimation of the contribution of the emission sources to the airborne pollen detecte...

Due to the increase in allergies, aerobio-logical studies carried out in cities are essential to keep the population informed about the pollen atmospheric concentrations detected. However, the high cost and complexity of aerobiological studies often mean that the information is generated from a single sampling point that may not be representative o...

COVID-19 lockdown measures have impacted the environment with both positive and negative effects. However, how human populations have perceived such changes in the natural environment and how they may have changed their daily habits have not been yet thoroughly evaluated. The objectives of this work were to investigate (1) the social perception of...

Paper mulberry pollens are known to trigger severe allergies that can also cause asthma exacerbations. In Islamabad, the paper mulberry pollen concentrations are thought to peak between the 10th and 31st of March each year, depending on the weather in the preceding months. However, more accurate prediction of high pollen days would allow patients t...

The westernmost European nucleus of the 5220* Habitat of Community Interest (HCI) is located in the province of Málaga (Andalusia). In this area, the 5220* HCI is characterized by the presence of scrublands of Gymnosporia senegalensis subsp. europaea. This is a relict species in Europe, with inhabits only in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula....

Due to the increase in allergies, aerobiological studies carried out in cities are essential to keep the population informed about the pollen atmospheric concentrations detected. However, the high cost and complexity of aerobiological studies often means that the information is generated from a single sampling point what may not be representative o...

Betulaceae species are anemophilous, and allergens from their pollen are a major cause of respiratory allergies in temperate areas where they are widely distributed. It is expected that, due to the strong influence of temperature on Betulaceae phenology, global warming will impact both the distribution and phenology of these species during the comi...

El ejemplar de Dicksonia antarctica del Pazo de Santa Cruz de Ribadulla forma parte de las plantaciones realizadas por Iván Armada y Fernández de Córdoba (el Tío Iván) en el último cuarto del siglo XIX, entre los años 1889 y 1896, procedente de los jardines de la Mata Nacional de Buçaco (Coimbra, Portugal), concretamente del “Vale dos Fetos” (valle...

Alternaria conidia have high allergenic potential and they can trigger important respiratory diseases. Due to that and to their extensive detection period, airborne Alternaria spores are considered as a relevant airborne allergenic particle. Several studies have been developed in order to predict the human exposure to this aeroallergen and to preve...

1) Introducción y objetivos: Maytenus senegalensis s.l. es un arbusto tropical afro-asiático, relicto en la Península Ibérica, protegido por las normativas de Andalucía, Valencia y Murcia con la categoría VU. Está considerado uno de los taxones directrices del Hábitat de Interés Comunitario (HIC) 5220* (Matorrales arborescentes de Ziziphus lotus),...

Climate change impacts on the structure and function of ecosystems will worsen public health issues like allergic diseases. Birch trees (Betula spp.) are important sources of aeroallergens in Central and Northern Europe. Birches are vulnerable to climate change as these trees are sensitive to increased temperatures and summer droughts. This study a...

El litoral mediterráneo terrestre andaluz de las provincias de Málaga y Granada (España), se encuentra fuertemente amenazado por la grave presión humana a la que está siendo sometido. El litoral malagueño tiene la particularidad de ser una zona de contacto entre el atlántico y mediterráneo lo que le ha llevado a presentar numerosos taxones y Hábita...

Missing data is a common problem in scientific research. The availability of extensive environmental time series is usually laborious and difficult, and sometimes unexpected failures are not detected until samples are processed. Consequently, environmental databases frequently have some gaps with missing data in it. Applying an interpolation method...

Significance Coexposure to airborne pollen enhances susceptibility to respiratory viral infections, regardless of the allergy status. We hypothesized this could be also true for SARS-CoV-2 infections. To investigate this, we tested for relationships between SARS-CoV-2 infection rates and pollen concentrations, along with humidity, temperature, popu...

Climate change affects the reproductive life cycles of plants, including pollen production, which has consequences for allergic respiratory diseases. We examined climatic trends at eight locations in Bavaria, Southern Germany, with pollen time series of at least 10 years (up to 30 years in Munich). Climate change in Bavaria was characterized by a r...

Research Highlights: This paper compares the thermal requirements in three different olive-growing areas in the Mediterranean region (Toledo, central Spain; Lecce, southeastern Italy; Chaal, central Tunisia). A statistical method using a partial least square regression for daily temperatures has been applied to study the chilling and heat requireme...

Alnus pollen has been frequently detected in the atmosphere of different airborne sampling sites of Southern Spain. However, Alnus sp. populations are very scarce and fragmented in the area, being restricted to a few river valleys in the southwest, and other further away regions of the Iberian Peninsula. This leads to think that the airborne pollen...

The effects of climate change on agricultural systems raise important uncertainties about the future productivity and suitability of crops, especially in areas suffering from intense environmental changes. Olive groves occupy Mediterranean areas characterized by seasonal temporary droughts, which cause this cultivation to be highly dependent on loc...

Airborne pollen concentrations vary depending on the location of the pollen trap with respect to the pollen sources. Two Hirst-type pollen traps were analyzed within the city of Munich (Germany): one trap was located 2 m above ground level (AGL) and the other one at rooftop (35 m AGL), 4.2 km apart. In general, 1.4 ± 0.5 times higher pollen amounts...

Se muestran los resultados obtenidos en dos Proyectos de Innovación Educativa de la Universidad de Málaga (PIE10-013 y PIE13-047), cuyos principales objetivos fueron la creación de Atlas Virtuales de Prácticas de Botánica, Flora y Vegetación, y su aplicación práctica mediante cuestionarios de autoevaluación a través del Campus Virtual. Estos atlas...

Daily fluctuations of the airborne pollen concentrations produce variations on symptomatology in allergic population. Such fluctuations are influenced by local vegetal coverage, flowering phenology, geography and climatology. Since 1991, airborne pollen of Malaga province (southern Spain) has been monitored in 7 different locations. Malaga station...

Betula pollen is frequently found in the atmosphere of central and northern Europe. Betula pollen are health relevant as they cause severe allergic reactions in the population. We developed models of thermal requirements to predict start, peak and end dates of the Betula main pollen season for Bavaria (Germany). Betula pollen data of one season fro...

Sierra de las Nieves is a Natural Park and a Biosphere Reserve located in Southern Spain. This protected area has a high diversity of ecosystems with abundant endangered species which has led to be proposed as a National Park. In January 2018, a pollen trap was installed inside this Natural Park in order to determine the atmospheric pollen behaviou...

Aerobiological databases are constantly increasing. Many of them contain long and extensive time series of data which are very difficult and tedious to manage. The development of new real‐time automatic sampling devices also requires new tools to reduce time of calculations and data management. In this sense, the AeRobiology r package has been impl...

R package "AeRobiology". Different tools for managing aeriobiological databases, elaborating the main calculations and visualization of results. In a first step, data are checked using tools for quality control and all missing gaps are completed. Then, the main parameters of the pollen season are calculated and represented graphically. Multiple gra...

This paper deals with aerobiological analyses realised during last 25 years in the atmosphere of Malaga, a coastal city located in the southwest of the Mediterranean Basin. Air sampling was performed by means of 7-day recording volumetric pollen and spore traps, and pollen grains were counted with the aid of a light microscope, according to the met...