Nondestructive determination of glucoraphanin in broccoli by deep learning and phenotypic fusion

The accurate quantification of glucoraphanin (GRA), a crucial health-promoting compound in broccoli, is vital for assessing its nutritional quality. However, traditional methods relying on destructive laboratory assays hinder rapid quality monitoring. To address this limitation, we developed a novel non-destructive, multimodal deep learning framework that integrates two phenotypic data modalities—image-based phenotypes from red-green-blue (RGB) leaf images and field-measured plant morphological traits—for accurate GRA estimation. Our proposed model, Parallel-Enhanced FasterNet (PE-FasterNet), incorporates two key innovations: a Gated Parallel Routing Attention (GPRA) mechanism for enhanced feature extraction, and a Phenotype-Guided Cross-Attention Feature Fusion (PG-CAFF) module for effective cross-modal fusion. Through rigorous evaluation, the model achieved a standard random-split test R 2 of 0.985 and a Leave-One-Group-Out (LOGO) cross-validation R 2 of 0.979, demonstrating highly accurate and generalized GRA predictions. This performance represents a substantial improvement over state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN) and Vision Transformer models, affirming the architectural superiority of our approach. This study not only provides a robust tool for rapid, non-destructive prediction of GRA but also demonstrates a viable pathway toward data-driven crop quality management and precision breeding in broccoli.