A field-acquired RGB–Depth image dataset for computer vision-based baby broccoli detection and size estimation under varying illumination conditions

This data article describes a curated RGB–Depth image dataset captured using an Intel RealSense D435 stereo depth camera mounted on an autonomous mobile platform during field deployments at commercial baby broccoli farms in Victoria, Australia. The dataset comprises 1,759 paired RGB images (640 × 480 pixels) and corresponding 16-bit depth frames acquired under both daytime (natural sunlight) and night-time (LED illumination) conditions, designed to support research in agricultural computer vision and robotic harvesting. Images were selected from 39,765 raw acquisitions through a reproducible Python curation pipeline applying quality filtering (blur detection, brightness thresholds, corruption detection), perceptual hash-based duplicate removal, and manual review. The final dataset includes 924 daytime and 835 night-time image pairs containing baby broccoli plants at various growth stages. The dataset provides RGB camera intrinsic parameters and pixel-aligned depth maps to enable 3D point cloud reconstruction. Potential applications include developing deep learning models for crop detection and segmentation, validating depth-based size estimation methods, and benchmarking illumination-robust vision systems. All data and curation code are publicly available under a CC BY 4.0 license.