AGRI-YOLO: A Lightweight Model for Corn Weed Detection with Enhanced YOLO v11n

Gaohui Peng, Kenan Wang, Jianqin Ma (), Bifeng Cui and Dawei Wang
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Gaohui Peng: College of Mathematics and Statistics, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Kenan Wang: College of Mathematics and Statistics, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Jianqin Ma: College of Water Resources, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Bifeng Cui: College of Water Resources, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China
Dawei Wang: College of Mathematics and Statistics, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Zhengzhou 450046, China

Agriculture, 2025, vol. 15, issue 18, 1-26

Abstract: Corn, as a globally significant food crop, faces significant yield reductions due to competitive growth from weeds. Precise detection and efficient control of weeds are critical technical components for ensuring high and stable corn yields. Traditional deep learning object detection models generally suffer from issues such as large parameter counts and high computational complexity, making them unsuitable for deployment on resource-constrained devices such as agricultural drones and portable detection devices. Based on this, this paper proposes a lightweight corn weed detection model, AGRI-YOLO, based on the YOLO v11n architecture. First, the DWConv (Depthwise Separable Convolution) module from InceptionNeXt is introduced to reconstruct the C3k2 feature extraction module, enhancing the feature extraction capabilities for corn seedlings and weeds. Second, the ADown (Adaptive Downsampling) downsampling module replaces the Conv layer to address the issue of redundant model parameters; The LADH (Lightweight Asymmetric Detection) detection head is adopted to achieve dynamic weight adjustment while ensuring multi-branch output optimization for target localization and classification precision. Experimental results show that the AGRI-YOLO model achieves a precision rate of 84.7%, a recall rate of 73.0%, and a mAP50 value of 82.8%. Compared to the baseline architecture YOLO v11n, the results are largely consistent, while the number of parameters, G FLOPs, and model size are reduced by 46.6%, 49.2%, and 42.31%, respectively. The AGRI-YOLO model significantly reduces model complexity while maintaining high recognition precision, providing technical support for deployment on resource-constrained edge devices, thereby promoting agricultural intelligence, maintaining ecological balance, and ensuring food security.

Keywords: deep learning; corn weed detection; YOLO v11n; depthwise separable convolution; adaptive downsampling; lightweight asymmetric detection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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