MFDN: an efficient detection method for Alstroemeria Genus flowers based on multi-scale feature fusion

As an ornamental plant, Alstroemeria Genus Morado holds great significance in precision agriculture for the automatic detection and classification of its flower maturity. However, due to its diverse morphologies, complex growth environments, and factors such as occlusion and lighting changes, related tasks face numerous challenges, and research in this area is relatively scarce. This study proposes a deep - learning - based object detection framework, the Morado Flower Detection Network (MFDN), which consists of two parts: a backbone network and a head network. Novel modules such as C3k2_PPA are introduced. Through multi - branch fusion and the attention mechanism, the ability to detect small targets is enhanced. The head network uses the CARAFE module for upsampling, combines features through Concat, accelerates processing with the optimized C2f module, and finally achieves precise detection and classification through the Detect module. In the comparative experiment on the morado_5may dataset, MFDN performs outstandingly in indicators such as Precision, Recall, and F1 - score. The mean Average Precision (mAP) of MFDN is 1.3% - 5.8% higher than that of YOLO - series models. It has strong generalization ability and is expected to contribute to improving the efficiency and automation level of agricultural production.