Real-Time Strawberry Ripeness Classification and Counting: An Optimized YOLOv8s Framework with Class-Aware Multi-Object Tracking

Abstract

Accurate fruit counting is crucial for data-driven decision-making in modern precision agriculture. In strawberry cultivation, a labor-intensive sector, automated, scalable yield estimation is especially critical. However, dense foliage, variable lighting, visual ambiguity of ripeness stages, and fruit clustering pose significant challenges. To overcome these, we developed a real-time multi-stage framework for strawberry detection and counting by optimizing a YOLOv8s detector and integrating a class-aware tracking system. The detector was enhanced with a lightweight C3x module, an additional detection head for small objects, and the Wise-IOU (WIoU) loss function, thereby improving performance against occlusion. Our final model achieved a 92.5% mAP@0.5, outperforming the baseline while reducing the number of parameters by 27.9%. This detector was integrated with the ByteTrack multiple object tracking (MOT) algorithm. Our system enabled accurate, automated fruit counting in complex greenhouse environments. When validated on video data, results showed a strong correlation with ground-truth counts (R2 = 0.914) and a low mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 9.52%. Counting accuracy was highest for ripe strawberries (R2 = 0.950), confirming the value for harvest-ready estimation. This work delivers an efficient, accurate, and resource-conscious solution for automated yield monitoring in commercial strawberry production.