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As urban landscaping advances, the struggle with garden pests and diseases grows more critical. Substantial interest has been drawn to large language models for their skill in interpreting what users mean and producing suitable responses. The addition of knowledge graphs has offered these models a well-organized, high-quality foundation of facts. This investigation merges knowledge graphs (KGs), large language models (LLMs), and similar tools to engineer a smart question-answering (Q&A) framework for garden pest and disease contexts. Forge a knowledge graph dedicated to garden pests and diseases by amassing dependable data through web scraping and scholarly review. Pinpoint central entities and their links to shape a conceptual schema. Employ the ERNIE-BiLSTM-CRF architecture to pull facts from unstructured text. Testing reveals the fact-extraction system advanced in this work scores above 92% on precision, recall, and F1 metrics, beating competing designs. Put forward a Q&A strategy that fuses the garden pest and disease KG with the ERNIE-Bot-turbo engine. Knowledge is turned into vectors, and the closest matches are located via similarity search; these top hits are then bundled with the query into cues fed to the language engine for natural language output. Trials stacking our technique against ERNIE-Bot-turbo and ChatGLM-6B showed strong results across easy, mid-level, and tough problems, sidestepping off-base replies to out-of-scope questions. It exceeded both baselines in correctness, hitting a 90% exact-answer mark for straightforward queries.

The capacity to detect rapeseed with precision and to track the enlargement of its canopy coverage stands among the most telling phenotypic signals of how the crop is developing. When both the individual rapeseed plant and the zone it occupies can be accurately recognized, the resulting data stream provides a powerful foundation for downstream phenotypic exploration and breeding programs. The difficulty, however, is that in genuine field conditions, detection performance continues to face serious obstacles because RGB data alone provides only a limited vocabulary of representable features. Seeking a way around this limitation, the work described here advances a dual-modal instance segmentation framework, MSNet, which builds on YOLOv11n-seg and combines RGB and Near-Infrared (NIR) data streams. The chief innovations embedded in this framework comprise three strategies governing where fusion occurs (at the front end, at an intermediate stage, or at the back end), together with a newly crafted Hierarchical Attention Fusion Block (HAFB) dedicated to blending multi-modal features. Experiments designed to compare these placement choices reveal that conducting fusion at the intermediate stage delivers the strongest compromise between how accurately the model detects and how economical it remains in terms of parameter count. Relative to the baseline, the improvement in mAP50:95 can reach 3.5%. Once the HAFB unit is incorporated, the MSNet-H-HAFB configuration posts a 6.5% lift in mAP50:95 over that baseline, while requiring fewer than 38% extra parameters. A point that deserves emphasis is that mid-stage fusion consistently outperformed the alternatives in every experimental run, supplying a clear blueprint for where future multi-modal architectures should position their fusion operations. In further testing, side-by-side comparisons against a suite of RGB-only instance segmentation alternatives confirmed that all MSNet-HAFB fused variants decisively beat single-modal counterparts on rapeseed count detection, reinforcing the case that multi-spectral fusion holds genuine promise for recognizing agricultural targets. As a concluding step, MSNet was applied in a practical agricultural scenario that included vegetation index analysis and grading of frost-related damage. The data pointed to ZN6–2836 and ZS11 as likely candidate elite lines, while the EVI2 vegetation index registered the strongest classification scores for frost damage in rapeseed.

Cotton growth is severely threatened by Verticillium wilt, which has a considerable negative effect on yield. For this reason, prompt identification of stress-related disease is critically important. The current work explored how Verticillium wilt stress influences leaf microstructure and physiological metrics (SOD, POD, CAT, MDA, Chla, Chlb, Chlab, Car) in cotton and tested whether hyperspectral imaging could be used to estimate those leaf physiological metrics. Results revealed that disease-induced stress altered the cellular architecture of cotton leaves, leading to the breakdown and disintegration of chloroplasts and mitochondria. Moreover, infected leaves showed significantly higher SOD and POD activities, as well as elevated MDA levels, relative to their healthy counterparts, while chlorophyll and carotenoid concentrations dropped markedly. Furthermore, rapid-assessment models for cotton physiological metrics were built, with the strongest models attaining Rp values spanning 0.809 to 0.975. These models were then employed to generate visual maps of the distribution of physiological signatures over cotton leaf surfaces. The outcomes indicate that the physiological phenotype of cotton leaves can be reliably captured using hyperspectral imaging, providing a solid theoretical foundation for rapid identification of Verticillium wilt stress.

The root system is essential not only for nutrient uptake and anchoring the plant but also for shaping crop development and responses to environmental stress. Rhizobox setups permit in situ, non-invasive root observation in soil, representing an economical imaging strategy. Nevertheless, soil’s non-transparent nature frequently produces discontinuous root images with intermittent gaps, diminishing the precision of derived root phenotypic metrics. We propose a root inpainting methodology grounded in a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) framework. Furthermore, a hybrid root inpainting dataset (HRID) was assembled, containing 1206 cotton root images with genuine gaps and 7716 rice root images with synthetically introduced gaps. Compared with computationally simulated root depictions, our dataset provides authentic root system architecture (RSA) and textural characteristics. Rather than cropping during training, our technique uses downsampled versions of the full image to convey the complete root morphology. Training the model uses binary cross-entropy loss to differentiate between root and background pixels.Additionally, Dice loss is incorporated to counteract the effects of uneven class representation. Skip connections typical of U-Net are removed, and an edge attention module (EAM) is introduced to retain more granular structural details. Compared with competing approaches, our technique substantially increases recall from 17.35% to 35.75% on a cotton root test collection of 122 images, indicating marked gains in inpainting fidelity. For root area, root length, convex hull area, and root depth, the trait error reduction rates (TERRs) reach 76.07%, 68.63%, 48.64%, and 88.28%, respectively, delivering significantly more accurate root phenotyping outcomes. Both the EU-GAN source code and the 8922 annotated images are openly accessible, offering potential reuse in other AI-driven investigations. This work provides a resilient solution for root phenotyping, thereby accelerating breeding workflows and expanding knowledge of root system behavior.

Agricultural output and the assurance of food supplies depend fundamentally on plant breeding. A new chapter in this field has been opened by Genomic Selection, a technology distinguished by its power to exploit variation across the entire genome for predictive purposes. This technique makes it unnecessary to have pre-existing knowledge of the genes controlling particular characteristics. Yet, the enormous scale of genomic information, contrasted with the usually scarce set of phenotypic observations, frequently leads to the “curse of dimensionality,” in which classic statistical approaches, machine learning, and deep learning architectures tend to memorize noise rather than learn patterns, yielding poor predictive performance. To address this barrier, we propose a consolidated Variational auto-encoder-based Multi-task Genomic Prediction model (VMGP) that fuses a self-supervised process of shrinking and rebuilding genomic data with several simultaneous forecasting objectives. This method provides a durable solution, offering a powerful inferential engine that has undergone rigorous verification across publicly available datasets for wheat, rice, and maize. The model we have built displays extraordinary proficiency in forecasting across multiple phenotypes and varying environments, effectively mastering the challenges of genomic selection spanning different populations and highlighting its distinct capabilities and practical importance. In addition, by fusing VMGP with tools for model transparency, we can efficiently sift through and prioritize influential single-nucleotide polymorphisms, thereby boosting prediction accuracy and putting forward avenues for potentially more economical genotyping workflows. The VMGP framework, characterized by its clean design, strong forecasting capabilities, and publicly accessible source code, is well-suited for widespread rollout across plant breeding operations. It proves especially valuable for practitioners whose main focus is phenotypic projection, yet who might not be deeply versed in deep learning methodologies or the intricacies of hyperparameter optimization.

Quantifying fruit mass and volume manually is a laborious, repetitive task that can hinder production scheduling. This investigation developed a computer vision framework to predict the volume and mass of baobab fruits from single-view photographs captured with affordable, widely accessible cameras, including smartphones. The baobab fruits were sourced from two experimental sites situated within the savanna ecological zone. Following image capture, the fruits were detected and segmented with an accuracy exceeding 97%. The segmented outputs were converted to binary format, from which two-dimensional (2D) attributes—namely the segmented area, centroid, bounding box, equivalent diameter, and major diameter—were derived. Volume estimations were generated from the 2D attributes by employing random forest, linear, polynomial, and radial support vector machine regressors. Every model achieved strong goodness-of-fit, yet the random forest regressor performed best, with an R2 of 99.8%. The linkage between mass and volume conformed to a quadratic expression (mass = 38.23 + 0.25 × volume + 4.49e−05 × volume2) and achieved an R2 of 92%. Correlations were substantiated through graphical plots and statistical evaluations, with credible intervals for the point estimates derived from the posterior distributions of their respective samples. This finding spotlights the potential to deploy artificial intelligence techniques in a less restrictive environment to support ecological studies and agricultural oversight. Commercial firms that manufacture baobab powder and seed oil ought to adopt these models to streamline production planning. Acquiring deeper insight into how climatic gradients shape the morphological properties of baobab fruits would help refine the model.

Computer vision and deep learning methods have attracted substantial interest in agriculture owing to their contactless, non-destructive nature. These technologies are increasingly being embedded in modern farming platforms, such as aquaponics, to tackle the barriers limiting their commercial expansion and industrial-scale deployment. Aquaponics is a production technique that fuses a recirculating aquaculture setup with soilless hydroponic cultivation, holding promise for addressing food security challenges. To supplement existing investigative efforts, a procedure is proposed to automatically quantify crop morphological features—namely, width, length, and area—and to infer the effective planting distance between grow channels. Planting distance is a core design variable that depends on crop type and its morphological expression; it therefore requires continuous surveillance to safeguard high yield and quality, which can be compromised by canopy occlusion or overlapping as plants develop. The presented pipeline applies Mask R-CNN to estimate crop dimensions and a mathematical formulation to determine plant spacing tailored to a self-adapting aquaponics installation. For common little gem romaine lettuce, growth is predicted within a 2 cm deviation for both length and width. The finalized model is served via a cloud-based platform and is coupled with an ontology model that encodes domain expertise in aquaponics systems. Pertinent knowledge regarding crop traits and ideal planting intervals is drawn from the ontology and cross-checked against the model’s outputs to propose follow-up measures. The introduced application derives its value as a decision-support framework, potentially paving the way for intelligent oversight and regulation.

Mango fruit exists in multiple cultivar types, and the principal maturity markers for quality assessment are total soluble solids (TSS) and pH. The investigation assessed the viability of coupling a handheld NIR spectrometer (NIRS) covering 740-1070 nm with multivariate algorithms and a smartphone to classify mango cultivars and assess their ripeness. A batch of 198 whole mango fruits was scanned using the NIR device; concurrently, a digital refractometer and a pH meter were used to quantify TSS and pH from extracted juice. Following various spectral preprocessing treatments, multivariate classification models—support vector machine (SVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), random forest (RF), neural network (NN), and a novel hybrid classifier (LDA-SVM)—were developed for varietal discrimination. Quantitative models predicting TSS and pH were constructed using partial-least-squares regression variants, including interval partial-least-squares (IPLS), synergy partial-least-squares (Si-PLS), and back interval-partial-least-squares (Bi-PLS). For classification, RAW, MC, SNV, FD, and SD preprocessing paired with the LDA-SVM classifier delivered perfect (100 %) varietal recognition in the training set and 97.44 % accuracy in the prediction set. For quantification, the optimal prediction model for both TSS and pH was Si-PLS, achieving R² values of 0.63 and 0.81, respectively and RMSEP values of 1.83 and 0.49, respectively. The study proved that swift, non-invasive estimation of TSS and pH is feasible by integrating a handheld NIR sensor with suitable chemometric analyses.