Enhanced recognition and counting of high-coverage Amorphophallus konjac by integrating UAV RGB imagery and deep learning

Accurate counting of Amorphophallus konjac (Konjac) plants can offer valuable insights for agricultural management and yield prediction. While current studies have primarily focused on detecting and counting crop plants during the early stages of low coverage, there is limited investigation into the later stages of high coverage, which could impact the accuracy of forecasting yield. High canopy coverage and severe occlusion in later stages pose significant challenges for plant detection and counting. Therefore, this study evaluated the performance of the Count Crops tool and a deep learning (DL) model derived from early-stage unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery in detecting and counting Konjac plants during the high-coverage growth stage. Additionally, the study proposed an approach that integrates the DL model with Konjac location information from both early-stage and high canopy coverage stage imagery to improve the accuracy of recognizing Konjac plants during the high canopy coverage stage. The results indicated that the Count Crops tool outperformed the DL model constructed solely from early-stage imagery in detecting and counting Konjac plants during the high-coverage period. However, given the single stem and erect growth characteristics of Konjac, incorporating the DL model with the location information of the Konjac plants achieved the highest accuracy (Precision = 98.7%, Recall = 86.7%, F1-score = 92.3%). Our findings indicate that combining DL detection results from the early growth stages of Konjac, along with plant positional information from both growth stages, not only significantly improved the accuracy of detecting and counting plants but also saved time on annotating and training DL samples in the later stages. This study introduces an innovative approach for detecting and counting Konjac plants during high-coverage periods, providing a new perspective for recognizing and counting other crop plants at high-overlapping growth stages.