Artificial Intelligence and Machine Vision for Full-Cycle Orchard Production Management and Harvest

Dear Colleagues,

Efficient management across the full production cycle of fruit orchards from early phenological monitoring to harvest is essential for achieving high yields, ensuring fruit quality, and maintaining long-term orchard sustainability. Each stage including flowering, fruit setting, growth, ripening, and harvest presents unique challenges that require timely and precise decision making in areas such as pollination, fertilization, thinning, pest and disease control, and harvesting operations.

Traditional manual observations and interventions are often labor-intensive, subjective, and inefficient for large-scale orchards. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in computer vision (CV) and intelligent sensing, automated solutions have emerged as powerful tools to address these challenges. These technologies enable the accurate monitoring of phenological changes, the detection of fruits at different growth stages, yield estimation, and the optimization of harvest timing and logistics, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing resource waste.

This Special Issue aims to bring together cutting-edge research on AI and machine vision for orchard production management across the entire cultivation cycle. Contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome:

• Flower detection and blooming stage recognition;
• Phenological phase monitoring throughout the growth cycle;
• Small and mature fruit detection, segmentation, and classification;
• Fruit growth tracking and yield estimation;
• Intelligent pest, disease, and nutrient monitoring systems;
• Harvest maturity assessment and optimal harvest scheduling;
• Autonomous and semi-autonomous harvesting technologies;
• Development of orchard-specific annotated datasets;
• Deep learning models for full-cycle phenotypic analysis;
• Integration of AI with IoT and robotics for orchard management.

By showcasing recent innovations in AI and CV for full-cycle orchard management and harvesting, this Special Issue aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers in horticulture, agricultural engineering, plant phenotyping, robotics, and intelligent sensing technologies.

Dr. Weikuan Jia
Dr. Nan Wang
Dr. Danyan Chen
Guest Editors

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