Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE B 2026 Vol.27 No.5 P.482-498

http://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B2500693


Improving RGB image recognition in the YOLO11n algorithm for accurate detection of tea plant diseases


Author(s):  Jinxian TAO, Xiaoli LI, Jingfei ZHANG, Muhammad SHOAIB, Muhammad Adnan ISLAM, Ibrar AHMAD, Yong HE, Sitan YE, Yujie WANG, Binhui LIAO, Mostafa GOUDA

Affiliation(s):  1. College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China more

Corresponding email(s):   xiaolili@zju.edu.cn, 13857077928@163.com

Key Words:  Tea disease detection, YOLO11n, Convolutional module, Attention mechanism, Loss function


Jinxian TAO, Xiaoli LI, Jingfei ZHANG, Muhammad SHOAIB, Muhammad Adnan ISLAM, Ibrar AHMAD, Yong HE, Sitan YE, Yujie WANG, Binhui LIAO, Mostafa GOUDA. Improving RGB image recognition in the YOLO11n algorithm for accurate detection of tea plant diseases[J]. Journal of Zhejiang University Science B, 2026, 27(5): 482-498.

@article{title="Improving RGB image recognition in the YOLO11n algorithm for accurate detection of tea plant diseases",
author="Jinxian TAO, Xiaoli LI, Jingfei ZHANG, Muhammad SHOAIB, Muhammad Adnan ISLAM, Ibrar AHMAD, Yong HE, Sitan YE, Yujie WANG, Binhui LIAO, Mostafa GOUDA",
journal="Journal of Zhejiang University Science B",
volume="27",
number="5",
pages="482-498",
year="2026",
publisher="Zhejiang University Press & Springer",
doi="10.1631/jzus.B2500693"
}

%0 Journal Article
%T Improving RGB image recognition in the YOLO11n algorithm for accurate detection of tea plant diseases
%A Jinxian TAO
%A Xiaoli LI
%A Jingfei ZHANG
%A Muhammad SHOAIB
%A Muhammad Adnan ISLAM
%A Ibrar AHMAD
%A Yong HE
%A Sitan YE
%A Yujie WANG
%A Binhui LIAO
%A Mostafa GOUDA
%J Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE B
%V 27
%N 5
%P 482-498
%@ 1673-1581
%D 2026
%I Zhejiang University Press & Springer
%DOI 10.1631/jzus.B2500693

TY - JOUR
T1 - Improving RGB image recognition in the YOLO11n algorithm for accurate detection of tea plant diseases
A1 - Jinxian TAO
A1 - Xiaoli LI
A1 - Jingfei ZHANG
A1 - Muhammad SHOAIB
A1 - Muhammad Adnan ISLAM
A1 - Ibrar AHMAD
A1 - Yong HE
A1 - Sitan YE
A1 - Yujie WANG
A1 - Binhui LIAO
A1 - Mostafa GOUDA
J0 - Journal of Zhejiang University Science B
VL - 27
IS - 5
SP - 482
EP - 498
%@ 1673-1581
Y1 - 2026
PB - Zhejiang University Press & Springer
ER -
DOI - 10.1631/jzus.B2500693


Abstract: 
Tea diseases, including brown and gray blight, result in significant yield and quality losses, especially in Longjing tea production. Traditional detection methods are prone to errors, while existing deep learning models often struggle to be robust under natural field conditions. To address these challenges, an improved lightweight detection model, asymmetric multi-level (AML) mechanism, dynamic snake convolution (DSC), and scalable intersection over union (SIoU) loss function-You Only Look Once (YOLO) (ADS-YOLO), was developed and validated. In the method, a dataset comprising 5694 smartphone-captured images of tea leaves was established under natural lighting. Enhancements were implemented in the YOLO11n baseline algorithm through incorporation of the SIoU loss function for better bounding box regression, DSC, which realizes adaptive feature extraction based on the dynamic spatial context, and an AML mechanism, which achieves lightweight feature fusion via adaptive multi-scale design. The results showed that ADS-YOLO achieved a precision of 0.935 and a recall of 0.870, compared to 0.894 and 0.818, respectively, when the baseline YOLO11n was used. Importantly, ADS-YOLO demonstrated a real-time performance of 137.1 frames per second (FPS), coupled with reduced computational costs. ADS-YOLO improved the mean average precision (mAP) at intersection over union threshold of 0.5 (mAP@0.5) by 6.4% compared with YOLOv5n and achieved up to 44.6% higher accuracy than YOLOv7t. In conclusion, ADS-YOLO achieved high accuracy, providing a scalable solution for real-time crop health monitoring and sustainable precision agriculture for tea production.

在YOLO11n算法中改进RGB图像识别以实现对茶树病害的精确检测

陶晋贤1, 李晓丽1, 张敬斐3, Muhammad SHOAIB1, Muhammad Adnan ISLAM1, Ibrar AHMAD1, 何勇1, 叶思潭1
王玉洁1, 廖彬惠3, Mostafa GOUDA1,2
1浙江大学生物系统工程与食品科学学院, 中国杭州, 310058
2埃及国家研究中心营养与食品科学部, 埃及吉萨, 12622
3莲都区农业农村局, 中国丽水, 323000
摘要:茶类病害(包括褐色疫病和灰色疫病)会显著降低茶叶的产量与品质,在龙井茶生产中尤为突出。传统检测方法易出现误检,而现有深度学习模型在自然田间条件下通常难以保证足够的鲁棒性。为了解决上述问题,本文提出并验证了一种改进的轻量级检测模型-融合非对称多级(AML)机制、动态蛇形卷积(DSC)与SIoU损失函数的YOLO模型(ADS-YOLO)。本研究在自然光照条件下,构建了包含5694张手机拍摄茶叶图像的数据集。以YOLO11n为基线模型,进行了以下主要改进:引入SIoU损失函数以提升边界框回归效果;采用DSC,基于动态空间上下文实现自适应特征提取;设计AML机制,通过自适应多尺度结构实现轻量化的特征融合。研究结果表明,ADS-YOLO的精确率为0.935,召回率为0.870,而基线模型YOLO11n的对应值分别为0.894和0.818。更重要的是,ADS-YOLO实现了137.1 FPS的实时检测性能,同时降低了计算复杂度。相较于YOLOv5n,ADS-YOLO的当交并比阈值为0.5时的平均精度均值(mAP@0.5)提升了6.4%;相较于YOLOv7t,精确率最高提升了44.6%。综上所述,ADS-YOLO实现了高精度检测,可为作物健康实时监测及茶叶生产的精准可持续发展提供可扩展性的解决方案。

关键词:茶叶病害检测;YOLO11n;卷积模块;注意力机制;损失函数

Darkslateblue:Affiliate; Royal Blue:Author; Turquoise:Article

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Full Text:   <707>

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CLC number: 

On-line Access: 2026-05-15

Received: 2025-10-30

Revision Accepted: 2026-01-28

Crosschecked: 2026-05-15

Cited: 0

Clicked: 1181

Citations:  Bibtex RefMan EndNote GB/T7714

 ORCID:

Jinxian TAO

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0271-9939

Xiaoli LI

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9689-9054

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