YOLOv11n-DualPC-Lite: a lightweight, high-precision real-time detection model for maize leaf diseases

To address the challenge of balancing model lightweight and detection accuracy in maize leaf disease detection, as well as the limitations of edge device deployment resources, we propose an enhanced target detection model, YOLOv11n-DualPC-Lite. Firstly, the C2fDualPConv module was designed, integrating PartialConv to replace some C3k2 modules in the backbone and neck networks. This approach enhances feature representation while reducing the number of parameters. Secondly, the Slim-Neck architecture is introduced in the neck network. To improve accuracy without increasing the number of parameters, the VoVGSCSPCSimAm module enables the new Slim-Neck structure to reduce parameters while strengthening feature representation. Finally, an EfficientHead detection head is introduced that uses an inverted bottleneck MBConv module to improve performance. This significantly reduces computational load while efficiently extracting features. This study constructed a maize leaf disease dataset integrating a publicly available Kaggle dataset and a field-collected dataset from Anhui Science and Technology University’s experimental plots. The dataset includes four categories: Blight, CommonRust, GrayLeafSpot, and Health. Through techniques such as rotation and gamma correction, the dataset was expanded from 3, 876 to 5, 165 images for model training and performance validation. Test results show this improved model performs better than other popular lightweight models overall, with a mAP50 score of 90. 9%. Meanwhile, the model has only 2. 13 million parameters; its computational complexity is reduced to 4. 55 G, and the model size is 4. 41 MB. Compared with the original YOLOv11n, its mAP50 is 1. 9% higher, while the number of parameters is down by 17. 8%, computational complexity is cut by 29. 3%, and file size is reduced by 15. 7%. When run on a Raspberry Pi 5, the model’s detection speed reaches 2. 3 FPS, an increase of 27. 8%. This model achieves a good balance between detection accuracy and lightweight performance for maize leaf diseases, providing an efficient and practical method for real-time crop disease monitoring.