TSP-yolo-based deep learning method for monitoring cabbage seedling emergence

Real-time monitoring of seedling emergence is vital for vegetable crop management and yield estimation. Traditionally, crop seedling emergence monitoring relies on low-efficient and time-consuming manual counting. To address this issue, this research proposed an efficient, fast, and real-time cabbage seedling counting method (combining the improved YOLOv8n, tracking algorithm, and image processing) to accurately track cabbage seedlings in the field and implement counting with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The improved YOLOv8n replaced the C2f Block in the YOLO backbone with a Swin-conv block and incorporated ParNet attention modules in both the backbone and neck parts. This enhancement enables the YOLOv8n to surpass the base model's performance, achieving a mAP50–95 of 90.3 %, representing a 14.5 % improvement. The experiments demonstrated the superior capabilities of the counting method in terms of speed and accuracy. In field experiments, the proposed Tracking algorithms-Swin-conv blocks-ParNet attention-YOLOv8n (TSP-yolo) counting method demonstrated consistent and reliable accuracy in counting cabbage seedlings while demanding only one-seventh of the time needed compared to the manual counting method. In summary, based on TSP-yolo and implemented through an UAV, the developed seedling emergence counting method demonstrated an excellent capability of counting cabbage seedlings, resulting in significant savings in human resources for crop management.