Deep Learning and Computer Vision for Crop Maturity Assessment

Abstract

Maturity at harvest is a critical determinant of yield, storability, market value, and nutritional quality, making accurate and objective maturity assessment essential for sustainable crop and fruit production. The agricultural sector is under pressure to satisfy rising global food demand while reducing losses and environmental impacts, yet conventional maturity assessment methods remain largely manual, subjective, and labour-intensive. Against this backdrop, computer vision and deep learning have emerged as powerful tools for non-destructive, high-throughput evaluation of maturity traits in the field and along the supply chain.​ This review consolidates recent advances in deep learning-based maturity assessment across a wide range of crops, with a particular emphasis on citrus fruits, where external colour change, internal quality, and heterogeneous orchard conditions pose distinctive challenges. The paper analyzes state of the art architectures for classification, segmentation and detection, associated datasets and imaging modalities, and the metrics used to benchmark performance. By critically examining their advantages and limitations for real-world deployment, the review outlines key research gaps and future directions toward robust, scalable, and sustainable DL-driven maturity assessment systems for both citrus and other major crops.

Plant phenotyping relevance

作物の成熟度という植物形質を対象に、画像・深層学習による評価手法、データセット、画像モダリティ、ベンチマーク指標を体系的にレビューしており、フェノタイピング手法が中心です。

Code and data availability

This is a review article on deep learning for crop maturity assessment. It surveys datasets (CitDet, Fortunella margarita, etc.) and models from cited prior work but presents no authors' own phenotype datasets, images, code, or trained models, and contains no availability/deposit statements for paper-specific assets.

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