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.
