YOLOv5s-BiPCNeXt, a Lightweight Model for Detecting Disease in Eggplant Leaves

Ensuring the healthy growth of eggplants requires the precise detection of leaf diseases, which can significantly boost yield and economic income. Improving the efficiency of plant disease identification in natural scenes is currently a crucial issue. This study aims to provide an efficient detection method suitable for disease detection in natural scenes. A lightweight detection model, YOLOv5s-BiPCNeXt, is proposed. This model utilizes the MobileNeXt backbone to reduce network parameters and computational complexity and includes a lightweight C3-BiPC neck module. Additionally, a multi-scale cross-spatial attention mechanism (EMA) is integrated into the neck network, and the nearest neighbor interpolation algorithm is replaced with the content-aware feature recombination operator (CARAFE), enhancing the model's ability to perceive multidimensional information and extract multiscale disease features and improving the spatial resolution of the disease feature map. These improvements enhance the detection accuracy for eggplant leaves, effectively reducing missed and incorrect detections caused by complex backgrounds and improving the detection and localization of small lesions at the early stages of brown spot and powdery mildew diseases. Experimental results show that the YOLOv5s-BiPCNeXt model achieves an average precision (AP) of 94.9% for brown spot disease, 95.0% for powdery mildew, and 99.5% for healthy leaves. Deployed on a Jetson Orin Nano edge detection device, the model attains an average recognition speed of 26 FPS (Frame Per Second), meeting real-time requirements. Compared to other algorithms, YOLOv5s-BiPCNeXt demonstrates superior overall performance, accurately detecting plant diseases under natural conditions and offering valuable technical support for the prevention and treatment of eggplant leaf diseases.