An Effective YOLOv11 Grain Detection Model Trained on Intact Barley Spikes Reveals a QTL Containing a Pivotal Regulator of Lateral Spikelet Formation.

Abstract

Grain number is a primary agronomic trait for targeted yield improvement, with the prospect of enhanced grain production leading to greater food security. Given the complex polygenic nature of the grain number trait, large sample sizes are essential for effective QTL identification. The implementation of trained computer vision models for grain detection offers a timely and cost-effective solution for rapid QTL isolation. In this study, we trained a grain detection model using Ultralytics' You Only Look Once (YOLOv11) framework. Training was completed on 1000 images of barley spikes, derived from a doubled haploid (DH) population descended from Hindmarsh and RGT Planet. The trained model, termed BarleyGC, achieved satisfactory accuracy metrics (mAP50-95 = 71.9%, recall = 96.7%, precision = 97.1%). Phenotypic characterisation of the DH population was completed with BarleyGC on a distinct collection of 973 images. The Pearson correlation coefficient (r) between model and manual-derived counts for the trait of grain number per spike was 0.895 ( p n = 153 DH lines), revealed a QTL peak at position 224.959 cM on the genetic map (LOD = 3.14), named qGN-2H. The QTL region contained 21 candidate genes-including HORVU2Hr1G092290 (HORVU.MOREX.r3.2HG0184740), encoding the six-rowed spike 1 ( Vrs1 ) gene-a well-characterised major regulator of row-type divergence and lateral spikelet development. Our study demonstrates the power of the YOLOv11 framework for grain quantification, with BarleyGC capable of grain detection directly from images of intact spikes in two-rowed barley varieties-thus achieving accelerated sample processing for the grain number trait.

Plant phenotyping relevance

大麦穂の画像から穀粒数を推定するYOLOv11モデルを開発・検証し、手動計数との比較およびQTL解析に応用しており、植物表現型取得法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper describes a custom YOLOv11 grain-detection pipeline (BarleyGC), annotated barley spike images, and QTL analysis, but no public deposit of the image dataset, annotations, trained model weights, or analysis code is provided. The Data Availability Statement only points to the article and Supplementary Material (

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.