Enhancing Precision Agriculture Pest Control: A YOLOv10-Based Deep Learning Approach for Insect Detection

Precision Agriculture (PA) leverages advanced technologies to optimize resource use while preserving crop quality and yield. However, pest infestations remain a critical challenge that can undermine these benefits. Recent deep learning frameworks like YOLOv8 have shown promise in real-time insect detection, yet often remain limited to specific insect types or crops. To address this limitation and improve detection accuracy, this work explores an enhanced, generalized approach using the latest YOLOv10 object detection model. We develop and test a YOLOv10-based tool designed to detect any insect category across diverse crops, enabling broader and faster pest monitoring in the field. A comprehensive performance evaluation was conducted on a benchmark insect dataset, demonstrating notable improvements over YOLOv8, including higher mean Average Precision (mAP) scores and faster inference speeds. The findings suggest that YOLOv10’s architectural advancements contribute to more robust, scalable, and real-time pest detection, offering significant potential to strengthen pest management strategies within precision agriculture.