YOLOv5-T: A precise real-time detection method for maize tassels based on UAV low altitude remote sensing images.

• YOLOv5-T can accurately identify maize tassels at different growth stages. • The average time for YOLOv5-T to detect maize tassels is 0.0237 s. • The mean Average Precision of maize tassels detection can reach 98.70 % Maize tassels is an important organ of maize plant, and has a very important impact on yield prediction and variety breeding. Therefore, realizing the efficient and accurate detection of maize tassels in the natural environment is the key to obtain maize phenotypes in large quantities and accurately predict maize yield. This study constructed a dataset of tassels from different growth stages, proposed a YOLOv5-Tassel (YOLOv5-T) maize tassels detection model based on UAV remote sensing platform, combined with attention mechanism, YOLOv5_l network, spatial pyramid pooling structure and multi-scale extraction advantages of Atrous convolution. The experimental results showed that the Average Precision (AP) of the model for maize tassels detection could reach 98.70 %, and the detection speed was 42.2f/s. And the method in this paper had strong robustness to changes in light intensity and maize tassels at different growth stages. It was feasible to use YOLOv5-T to detect large areas of maize tassels in real time, which provided a useful reference for the estimation of maize yield and the selection of maize varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]