YOLO for early detection and management of Tuta absoluta-induced tomato leaf diseases
The agricultural sector faces persistent threats from plant diseases and pests, with Tuta absoluta posing a severe risk to tomato farming by causing up to 100% crop loss. Timely pest detection is essential for effective intervention, yet traditional methods remain labor-intensive and inefficient. Re...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2025-05-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Plant Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2025.1524630/full |
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| Summary: | The agricultural sector faces persistent threats from plant diseases and pests, with Tuta absoluta posing a severe risk to tomato farming by causing up to 100% crop loss. Timely pest detection is essential for effective intervention, yet traditional methods remain labor-intensive and inefficient. Recent advancements in deep learning offer promising solutions, with YOLOv8 emerging as a leading real-time detection model due to its speed and accuracy, outperforming previous models in on-field deployment. This study focuses on the early detection of Tuta absoluta-induced tomato leaf diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first major contribution is the annotation of a dataset (TomatoEbola), which consists of 326 images and 784 annotations collected from three different farms and is now publicly available. The second key contribution is the proposal of a transfer learning-based approach to evaluate YOLOv8’s performance in detecting Tuta absoluta. Experimental results highlight the model’s effectiveness, with a mean average precision of up to 0.737, outperforming other state-of-the-art methods that achieve less than 0.69, demonstrating its capability for real-world deployment. These findings suggest that AI-driven solutions like YOLOv8 could play a pivotal role in reducing agricultural losses and enhancing food security. |
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| ISSN: | 1664-462X |