Abstract:

[Objective] The YOLO-MDFR (You Only Look Once Version 12-MDFR), a lightweight detection algorithm was proposed based on an enhanced YOLOv12m, specifically designed for accurate identification of pepper leaf diseases and pests in complex natural environments. Pepper cultivation frequently faces challenges from diseases and pests, and early detection is critical for reducing yield losses. However, existing detection models often suffer from limitations such as insufficient feature extraction for subtle lesions, loss of edge information due to complex backgrounds, and high missed detection rates for small lesions. To address these issues, the model was systematically improved in three key aspects: backbone lightweighting, attention mechanism enhancement, and optimized multi-scale feature fusion, aiming to balance detection accuracy, model compactness, and real-time performance for field applications. ​ [Methods] The dataset was established in the primary pepper cultivation zone of Gangu County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province. The cultivated variety was the locally dominant Capsicum annuum L. var. conoides (Mill.). Data collection was conducted from March 15 to May 20, 2024. The collected samples included four categories of pepper leaves: healthy leaves, leaves damaged by thrips, leaves infected with tobacco mosaic virus exhibiting yellowing symptoms, and leaves affected by bacterial leaf spot. First, the original YOLOv12m backbone was replaced with an improved MobileNetV4 architecture to enhance lightweight performance while preserving feature extraction capability. Specifically, the original 5×5 standard convolutions in the bottleneck layers of MobileNetV4 were substituted with two sequential 3×3 depthwise separable convolutions. This design was based on the principle that two 3×3 convolutions achieve an equivalent receptive field (matching the 5×5 coverage) while reducing parameter count—depthwise separable convolutions further decompose spatial and channel convolution, minimizing redundant computations. Second, a novel Dimensional Frequency Reciprocal Attention Mixing Transformer (D-F-Ramit) module was introduced to enhance sensitivity to lesion boundaries and fine-grained textures. The module first converted feature maps from the spatial domain to the frequency domain using discrete cosine transform (DCT), capturing high-frequency components often lost in spatial-only attention. It then integrated three parallel branches: channel attention, spatial attention, and frequency-domain attention. Finally, a Residual Aggregation Gate-controlled Convolution (RAGConv) module was developed for the neck network. This module included a residual aggregation path to collect multi-layer feature information and a gate control unit that dynamically weighted feature components based on their relevance. The residual structure provided a direct gradient propagation path, alleviating gradient vanishing during backpropagation and ensuring efficient information transfer during feature fusion. A systematic experimental framework was established to comprehensively evaluate model performance: (1) Ablation studies were conducted using a controlled variable approach to verify the individual contributions of the improved MobileNetV4, D-F-Ramit, and RAGConv modules; (2) Lesion scale sensitivity analysis assessed detection performance across different lesion sizes, with emphasis on small-spot recognition; (3) Resolution impact analysis evaluated five common input resolutions (320×320–736×736) to explore the trade-offs among accuracy, speed, and computational efficiency; and (4) Embedded deployment validation involved model quantization and implementation on the Rockchip RK3588 platform to measure inference speed and power consumption on edge devices. [Results and Discussion] YOLO-MDFR achieved a mAP@0.5 of 95.6% on this dataset. Compared to YOLOv12m, it improved accuracy by 2.0%, reduced parameters by 61.5%, and lowered computational complexity by 68.5%. Real-time testing showed 43.4 FPS on an NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU (CUDA 12.2) and 22.8 FPS on a Rockchip RK3588 embedded platform with only 3.5 W power consumption—suitable for battery-powered field devices. Lesion-scale analysis revealed 33.5% accuracy for <16×16 pixel lesions critical for early detection. Confusion matrix evaluation reduced misclassification, bacterial leaf spot/thrips damage misrates fell from 5.8% to 2.1%, and tobacco mosaic virus/healthy leaves from 3.2% to 1.5%, resulting in an overall 2.3% misrate. Experiments across varying input resolutions revealed a clear performance–resolution trade-off. As resolution increased from 320×320 to 736×736, mAP rose from 89.5% to 96.2%, showing diminishing returns beyond 512×512. Concurrently, computational cost grew roughly quadratically, reducing inference speed from 65.2 FPS to 35.1 FPS. [Conclusion] This study presents YOLO-MDFR, a lightweight detection model for identifying pepper leaf diseases and pests under complex natural conditions. By integrating an improved MobileNetV4 backbone, a multi-dimensional frequency reciprocal attention mixing transformer (D-F-Ramit), and a residual aggregation gate-controlled convolution (RAGConv) module, YOLO-MDFR outperforms mainstream detection models in both accuracy and efficiency. Systematic deployment experiments yielded optimized configurations for different application scenario. Despite its strong performance, the model shows limitations in robustness under extreme lighting, generalization to emerging diseases, and detection of small targets under occlusion. Future work will address these issues through ambient light data fusion, domain adaptation with semi-supervised learning, and binocular vision integration.

Key words: pepper leaf, leaf disease and pest detection, MobileNetV4, lightweight deep learning model, attention mechanism