The method for the determination of pollen viability and/or maturation grade of a pollen population, comprises: mechanically removing pollen grains from flowers; re-suspending pollen grains in an electrically conductive buffer for keeping the plant cells to remain viable; passing the pollen suspension through an appropriate filter with a pore size suitable for a microfluidic device being adapted to perform impedance flow cytometry (IFC); passing the filtered suspension through the microfluidic device and measuring an impedance of the pollen grains; storing the measured impedance values of each pollen with the amplitude value and its correlated phase angle as well as the measurement frequencies; counting the pollen grains in the filtered suspension; and discriminating the pollen grains according to the amplitude and/or phase values by setting an appropriate gate and determining the viability ratio or maturation grade of the analysed pollen population. An advantage of the present invention is that a plant cell does not have to be stained for viability analysis, the method is non-invasive and a high number of cells can be analysed in a short time frame in real-time and on-site. It is possible to follow developmental processes of plant cells, and that it is applicable to all plant species. In particular, the method allows a standardized measurement independent of the location and all over the world.
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