Detection and Segmentation of Chip Budding Graft Sites in Apple Nursery Using YOLO Models

The use of convolutional neural networks in nursery production remains limited, emphasizing the need for advanced vision-based approaches to support automation. This study evaluated the feasibility of detecting chip-budding graft sites in apple nurseries using YOLO object detection and segmentation models. A dataset of 3630 RGB images of budding sites was collected under variable field conditions. The models achieved high detection precision and consistent segmentation performance, confirming strong convergence and structural maturity across YOLO generations. The YOLO12s model demonstrated the most balanced performance, combining high precision with superior localization accuracy, particularly under higher Intersection-over-Union threshold conditions. In the segmentation experiments, both architectures achieved nearly equivalent performance, with only minor variations observed across evaluation metrics. The YOLO11s-seg model showed slightly higher Precision and overall stability, whereas YOLOv8s-seg retained a small advantage in Recall. Inference efficiency was assessed on both high-performance (RTX 5080) and embedded (Jetson Orin NX) platforms. YOLOv8s achieved the highest inference efficiency with minimal Latency, while TensorRT optimization further improved throughput and reduced Latency across all YOLO models. These results demonstrate that framework-level optimization can provide substantial practical benefits. The findings confirm the suitability of YOLO-based methods for precise detection of grafting sites in apple nurseries and establish a foundation for developing autonomous systems supporting nursery and orchard automation.