{"doi":"10.3390/agronomy16030384","title":"Application of the Improved YOLOv8-DeepSORT Framework in Motion Tracking of Pepper Leaves Under Droplet Occlusion","abstract":"<jats:p>In agricultural plant protection spraying, dynamic occlusion by droplet swarms on leaf surfaces poses a major challenge to accurately acquiring leaf motion parameters, limiting the optimization of precision spraying and pesticide utilization. Traditional contact-based methods interfere with natural leaf dynamics, while non-contact optical approaches suffer from tracking failures under occlusion. This study proposes an improved framework combining YOLOv8 integrated with a Spatial Attention Module (SAM) and optimized DeepSORT for robust non-contact tracking of marked points on pepper leaves. High-speed binocular cameras were used to collect leaf motion data under controlled droplet occlusion conditions. Results demonstrate that, under 5% occlusion, the improved model achieves a 19.6% increase in detection mAP@0.5 and significantly enhances tracking MOTA, with trajectory breakage rate reduced to 3.2% and ID switches decreased by approximately 71.4% in long-sequence tracking. Quantitative analysis of leaf midrib motion reveals a clear spatial gradient: average speed increases from 0.012 m s−1 at the base to 0.153 m s−1 at the tip, with intensified fluctuations toward the tip and a consistent dominant vibration frequency of 0.403 Hz across all points. This method provides an efficient, reliable non-contact solution for measuring leaf motion parameters in complex spraying scenarios, offering valuable data support for targeted spray parameter optimization and improved deposition efficiency in precision agriculture.</jats:p>","journal":"Agronomy","year":2026,"id":4838,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0493,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2026-02-05","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":50402,"name":"Kuan Liu","orcid":"0009-0001-9577-6615","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":50403,"name":"Jing Ma","orcid":"0000-0002-8945-488X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":50404,"name":"Baijing Qiu","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":26051,"name":"Fengfeng Guo","orcid":"0000-0002-3864-9257","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":48,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}