Variational data assimilation, which is recently introduced to the air quality modeling, is a promising tool for obtaining optimal estimates of initial conditions and other important parameters such as emission and deposition rates. In this paper. two advanced techniques for variational data assimilation, based on the adjoint and quasi-inverse methods, are tested for a simple air quality problem. The four-dimensional variational assimilation (4D-Var) requires to run an adjoint model to provide the gradient information in an iterative minimization process, whereas the inverse 3D-Var (I3D-Var) seeks for optimal initial conditions directly by running a quasi -inverse model. For a process with small dissipation, I3D-Vu outperforms 4D-Var in both computing time and accuracy. Hybrid application which combines I3D-Var and standard 4D-Var is also suggested for efficient data assimilation in air quality problems.