  We examine the possibility of achieving quintessential inflation, where the
same field serves as both inflaton and quintessence, in the context of a
five-dimensional braneworld. Braneworld cosmology provides an appropriate
environment as it permits inflation with much steeper potentials than the
conventional scenario, which is favourable to a late-time quintessence. We
explore a wide space of models, together with contemporary observational data,
to determine in which contexts such a picture is possible. We find that such a
scenario, although attractive, is in fact impossible to achieve for the
potentials studied due to the restrictiveness of current data.
