On the possibility of automated scoring of pollen mutants.

Both flow cytometry and automated image analysis techniques may be useful in relieving the drudgery, increasing the speed, and adding quantitation to the scoring of pollen mutants, but practical problems related to the detection of very rare events have to be overcome. The features of flow and image cytometry instrumentation that may be useful for pollen measurements are discussed and a qualitative framework is presented from which to view the rare event problem.