Application of Non-Contact Detection and Artificial Intelligence Techniques to Estimate Quality and Longevity of Horticultural Plants

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Horticultural Science and Ornamental Plants".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2025 | Viewed by 2342

Special Issue Editor


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Department of Smart Horticultural Science, Andong National University, Andong, Republic of Korea
Interests: plant physiology; horticulture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Rapid and accurate horticultural product quality assessment is becoming increasingly important as e-commerce continues to expand globally. Recently, non-contact detection (NCD) techniques, including hyperspectral photography, thermography, and NIR spectrometry, have become widely applied for assessing crop quality attributes. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, including deep learning based on algorithms, have also been employed to develop assessment methods because they can predict specific factors based on images obtained using NCD methods. Converging interdisciplinary research involving plant science and AI techniques is becoming increasingly important as it provides creative solutions to develop rapid and accurate tools that can classify horticultural products for quality assurance systems. This Special Issue of Plants deals with the application of NCD methods and AI models to assess as well as predict external and internal quality factors in horticultural plants.

Dr. Byung-Chun In
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • AI
  • deep learning
  • hyperspectral imaging
  • non-contact
  • non-destructive
  • prediction
  • postharvest
  • quality
  • longevity

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 13361 KiB  
Article
Vase-Life Monitoring System for Cut Flowers Using Deep Learning and Multiple Cameras
by Ji Yeong Ham, Yong-Tae Kim, Suong Tuyet Thi Ha and Byung-Chun In
Plants 2025, 14(7), 1076; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14071076 - 1 Apr 2025
Viewed by 390
Abstract
Here, we developed a vase-life monitoring system (VMS) to automatically and accurately assess the post-harvest quality and vase life (VL) of cut roses. The VMS integrates camera imaging with the YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once version 8) deep learning algorithm to continuously monitor [...] Read more.
Here, we developed a vase-life monitoring system (VMS) to automatically and accurately assess the post-harvest quality and vase life (VL) of cut roses. The VMS integrates camera imaging with the YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once version 8) deep learning algorithm to continuously monitor major physiological parameters including flower opening, fresh weight, water uptake, and gray mold disease incidence. Our results showed that the VMS can automatically measure the main physiological factors of cut roses by obtaining precise and consistent data. The values measured for physiology and disease by the VMS closely correlated with those measured by observation (OBS). Additionally, YOLOv8 achieved a high performance in the model by obtaining an object detection accuracy of 90%. Additionally, the mAP0.5 supported the high accuracy of the model in evaluating the VL of cut roses. Regression analysis revealed a strong correlation between the VL, VMS, and OBS. The VMS incorporating the microscope detected physiological and disease factors in the early stages of development. These results show that the plant monitoring system incorporating a microscope is highly effective for evaluating the post-harvest quality of cut roses. The early detection method using the VMS could also be applied to the flower breeding process, which requires rapid measurements of important characteristics of flower species, such as VL and disease resistance, to develop superior cultivars. Full article
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19 pages, 29968 KiB  
Article
Ripe Tomato Detection Algorithm Based on Improved YOLOv9
by Yan Wang, Qianjie Rong and Chunhua Hu
Plants 2024, 13(22), 3253; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13223253 - 20 Nov 2024
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1664
Abstract
Recognizing ripe tomatoes is a crucial aspect of tomato picking. To ensure the accuracy of inspection results, You Only Look Once version 9 (YOLOv9) has been explored as a fruit detection algorithm. To tackle the challenge of identifying tomatoes and the low accuracy [...] Read more.
Recognizing ripe tomatoes is a crucial aspect of tomato picking. To ensure the accuracy of inspection results, You Only Look Once version 9 (YOLOv9) has been explored as a fruit detection algorithm. To tackle the challenge of identifying tomatoes and the low accuracy of small object detection in complex environments, we propose a ripe tomato recognition algorithm based on an enhanced YOLOv9-C model. After collecting tomato data, we used Mosaic for data augmentation, which improved model robustness and enriched experimental data. Improvements were made to the feature extraction and down-sampling modules, integrating HGBlock and SPD-ADown modules into the YOLOv9 model. These measures resulted in high detection performance with precision and recall rates of 97.2% and 92.3% in horizontal and vertical experimental comparisons, respectively. The module-integrated model improved accuracy and recall by 1.3% and 1.1%, respectively, and also reduced inference time by 1 ms compared to the original model. The inference time of this model was 14.7 ms, which is 16 ms better than the RetinaNet model. This model was tested accurately with mAP@0.5 (%) up to 98%, which is 9.6% higher than RetinaNet. Its increased speed and accuracy make it more suitable for practical applications. Overall, this model provides a reliable technique for recognizing ripe tomatoes during the picking process. Full article
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