Microbial fermentation is an important part of industrial microbiology and encompasses many arenas including biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmeceutical products and probiotics.  As society increases its demand for quality products, the microbiology industry is called to research means to produce goods with minimal waste and time.  Millions of research dollars are used annually to create ways to increase production and develop new products. This is why the microbial fermentation industry holds significant interest in real-time viability monitoring. Current microbial monitoring with the traditional plate count method generally requires 1-7 days for results and other methods of monitoring fermentation cultures may not yield accurate viability results. Advanced Analytical’s automated Micro PRO™ Detection System offers an alternative to traditional microbial counting methods by providing rapid and accurate enumeration of viable microorganisms in bacterial and yeast fermentation cultures. Lactobacillus casei, Enterococcus faecium, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Bacillus subtilis dried cultures were serially diluted in phosphate buffer. Diluted cultures (n=12) were analyzed for viable counts on the Micro PRO™ Detection System using the FASTEST Total Viable Organisms Reagent Kit. The Micro PRO™ generated viable cell counts within 5 minutes of sampling.  Additionally, samples analyzed on the Micro PRO™ were spread-plated according to traditional agar plate method for plate comparison. The Micro PRO™ viable counts of each microorganism sample correlated well, R² ≥ 0.9931, with the traditional plate method. Based on these results, the Micro PRO™ proves to be a useful tool for determining viable counts in dried cultures yielding rapid results over traditional agar plate methods.