In response to the numerous challenges faced by traditional human pose recognition methods in practical applications, such as dense targets, severe edge occlusion, limited application scenarios, complex backgrounds, and poor recognition accuracy when targets are occluded, this paper proposes a YOLO-Pose algorithm for human pose estimation. The specific improvements are divided into four parts. Firstly, in the Backbone section of the YOLO-Pose model, lightweight GhostNet modules are introduced to reduce the model’s parameter count and computational requirements, making it suitable for deployment on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Secondly, the ACmix attention mechanism is integrated into the Neck section to improve detection speed during object judgment and localization. Furthermore, in the Head section, key points are optimized using coordinate attention mechanisms, significantly enhancing key point localization accuracy. Lastly, the paper improves the loss function and confidence function to enhance the model’s robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that the improved model achieves a 95.58% improvement in mAP50 and a 69.54% improvement in mAP50-95 compared to the original model, with a reduction of 14.6 M parameters. The model achieves a detection speed of 19.9 ms per image, optimized by 30% and 39.5% compared to the original model. Comparisons with other algorithms such as Faster R-CNN, SSD, YOLOv4, and YOLOv7 demonstrate varying degrees of performance improvement.

The escalating global climate change significantly impacts the yield and quality of maize, a vital staple crop worldwide, especially during seedling stage droughts. Traditional detection methods are limited by their single-scenario approach, requiring substantial human labor and time, and lack accuracy in the real-time monitoring and precise assessment of drought severity. In this study, a novel early drought detection method for maize based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images and Yolov8+ is proposed. In the Backbone section, the C2F-Conv module is adopted to reduce model parameters and deployment costs, while incorporating the CA attention mechanism module to effectively capture tiny feature information in the images. The Neck section utilizes the BiFPN fusion architecture and spatial attention mechanism to enhance the model’s ability to recognize small and occluded targets. The Head section introduces an additional 10 × 10 output, integrates loss functions, and enhances accuracy by 1.46%, reduces training time by 30.2%, and improves robustness. The experimental results demonstrate that the improved Yolov8+ model achieves precision and recall rates of approximately 90.6% and 88.7%, respectively. The mAP@50 and mAP@50:95 reach 89.16% and 71.14%, respectively, representing respective increases of 3.9% and 3.3% compared to the original Yolov8. The UAV image detection speed of the model is up to 24.63 ms, with a model size of 13.76 MB, optimized by 31.6% and 28.8% compared to the original model, respectively. In comparison with the Yolov8, Yolov7, and Yolo5s models, the proposed method exhibits varying degrees of superiority in mAP@50, mAP@50:95, and other metrics, utilizing drone imagery and deep learning techniques to truly propel agricultural modernization.

One of the crucial research areas in agricultural decision-making processes is crop yield prediction. This study leverages the advantages of hybrid models to address the complex interplay of genetic, environmental, and management factors to achieve more accurate crop yield forecasts. Therefore, this study used the data of wheat growth environment, crop management, and historical yield in experimental fields in Anding District, Dingxi City, Gansu Province from 1984 to 2021 to construct eight machine learning models and ensemble models. Furthermore, Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM), machine learning (ML), and APSIM combined with machine learning (APSIM-ML) were employed to predict wheat yields in 2012, 2016, and 2021. The results show that the APSIM-ML weighted ensemble prediction model, optimized to minimize the MSE, performed the best. Compared to the optimized ML and APSIM models, the average improvements in the RMSE, RRMSE, and MBE for the test years were 43.54 kg/ha, 3.55%, and 15.54 kg/ha, and 93.96 kg/ha, 7.55%, and 104.21 kg/ha, respectively. At the same time, we found that the dynamic flow of water and nitrogen between the soil and crops had the greatest impact on wheat yield prediction. This study improved the accuracy of dryland wheat yield prediction in Gansu Province and provides technical support for the intelligent production of dryland wheat in the loess hilly area.

In the context of rapidly advancing agricultural technology, precise and efficient methods for crop detection and counting play a crucial role in enhancing productivity and efficiency in crop management. Monitoring corn tassels is key to assessing plant characteristics, tracking plant health, predicting yield, and addressing issues such as pests, diseases, and nutrient deficiencies promptly. This ultimately ensures robust and high-yielding corn growth. This study introduces a method for the recognition and counting of corn tassels, using RGB imagery captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the YOLOv8 model. The model incorporates the Pconv local convolution module, enabling a lightweight design and rapid detection speed. The ACmix module is added to the backbone section to improve feature extraction capabilities for corn tassels. Moreover, the CTAM module is integrated into the neck section to enhance semantic information exchange between channels, allowing for precise and efficient positioning of corn tassels. To optimize the learning rate strategy, the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) is utilized. Significant improvements in recognition accuracy, detection efficiency, and robustness are observed across various UAV flight altitudes. Experimental results show that, compared to the original YOLOv8 model, the proposed model exhibits an increase in accuracy of 3.27 percentage points to 97.59% and an increase in recall of 2.85 percentage points to 94.40% at a height of 5 m. Furthermore, the model optimizes frames per second (FPS), parameters (params), and GFLOPs (giga floating point operations per second) by 7.12%, 11.5%, and 8.94%, respectively, achieving values of 40.62 FPS, 14.62 MB, and 11.21 GFLOPs. At heights of 10, 15, and 20 m, the model maintains stable accuracies of 90.36%, 88.34%, and 84.32%, respectively. This study offers technical support for the automated detection of corn tassels, advancing the intelligence and precision of agricultural production and significantly contributing to the development of modern agricultural technology.

The aim of this study is to propose a lightweight YOLOv8n maize seedling detection algorithm that incorporates multi-scale features to address the problems of large number of model parameters and computation, low real-time performance, and small detection range of the existing maize seedling detection models during plant detection. By fusing RepConv with HGNetV2 using the idea of reparameterisation, a Rep_HGBlock structure is designed to form a new lightweight backbone network, Rep_HGNetV2,; BiFPN is introduced into the neck network portion of the model to enhance the interactive fusion of bidirectional information flow between multiple scales and hierarchies; and a fusion task decomposition, dynamic convolutional alignment is designed, DFL (Distribution Focal Loss) ideas, TDADH, a task dynamically aligned detection head, which uses shared convolution and dynamically aligns the tasks of classification and localization to extract features; and Grad-CAM++ technique is used to generate a heat map for model detection, visualize effective features of the target and understand the model focus region. The experimental results show that the improved model achieves a detection accuracy of 96.5%, which is basically the same as the original model. The weight size, number of parameters, and computational FLOPs are reduced to 3.5 MB, 1.58 M, and 7.4 G, respectively, which are reduced by about 43%, 47%, and 8.6%. The frame rate FPS is only reduced from 149.98 to 146.3, a reduction of about 2.4%. The results show that the lightweight model has high recognition accuracy, speed and low complexity, which is more suitable for practical deployment in resource-constrained edge devices, UAVs, and embedded systems, and is able to provide technical support for the precise management of maize during the seedling stage of drip irrigation water-fertilizer integration.

To improve the applicability of crop models, this study compared two algorithms for optimizing the single objective parameters of the spring wheat in the dryland grain growth sub-model to identify the more efficient algorithm for application in future model parameter optimization. Based on field experiments from 2015 to 2021 in Gansu Province, this study combined weather data and yearbook yield data from 1984 to 2021 to optimize parameters related to grain growth of spring wheat in dryland based on the next-generation APSIM using two algorithms: the Nelder–Mead simplex algorithm and the DREAM-zs algorithm. The results were as follows: the optimization results of both algorithms were the same, but the DREAM-zs algorithm converged faster; the optimized parameters for the grain growth stage of Dingxi35 spring wheat were: a grain number per gram stem of 25 grains, an initial grain proportion of 0.05, and a maximum grain size of 0.049 g; after optimization, the root mean square error (RMSE) of observed and simulated yield values decreased from 186.84 kg/hm² to 115.71 kg/hm², and the normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) decreased from 10.33% to 6.40%. The optimized results were consistent with the growth and development process of wheat and had high applicability.