PONE-D-23-03909YOLO-plum: A High Precision and Real-time Improved Algorithm for Plum RecognitionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mu,

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Feng Ding

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The reviewers have raised several issues regarding the paper. Therefore, it is necessary to undergo a major revision.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Comments to the Author

Object detection is an important aspect of computer vision. Since the plum plant has a wide range of applications in China, accurate plum identification is a significant application of object detection.

This paper proposes a real-time approach for the detection of unripe plums by improving the structure of YOLO. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

The paper is well-organized and discussed in detail. However, there are still a few issues to be addressed in the revision.

1.In Figure 9, the font size is too small to be read clearly, and there is too much blank space in the figure. I suggest increasing the font size and compacting the layout.

2.In Table 3, it would be better to bold the value that wins the comparison.

3.In section 2.3.2. Bi-Cubic interpolation, I think the sentence "Assume that the source image A is of size m×n and the target image B scaled K times is of size m×n" should be revised to "Assume that the source image A is of size mxn and the target image B scaled K times is of size M×N".

Reviewer #2: Based on the manuscript, it appears that the paper aims to improve the accuracy and speed of batch identification of immature plums through the use of deep learning and improvements to the YOLOv5 algorithm. The establishment of an artificial dataset for plums is also mentioned, which suggests that this study involves both theoretical and practical elements. In order to meet the criteria for being able to publish, I think the following changes need to be made:

(1) The formatting of the entire text is confusing and gives the reader a very poor sense of perspective.

-First, please leave a space after the period.

-Second, please use the formula editor to describe the formula rather than the image, and the formula needs to be labeled and centered.

-Third, the size of the diagram and table cannot exceed the line width. The appearances such as Table 3 and 4 are not acceptable.

-Fourth, the resolution of the images in the paper describing the network structure and training convergence are basically very low, please use vector maps to describe the network structure. For Figure 12, not only the resolution should be improved, but also the meaning of x-axis and y-axis should be labeled on the figure.

(2) The abstract seems a bit long, so please put the three contributions at the end of the introduction. At the end of the introduction, please provide an overview of the individual chapters.

(3) From the authors' description, it is known that the dataset was collected by the authors themselves through two devices. However, due to the limited description, I have doubts about the reasonableness of the dataset. For example, whether there are images under different lighting conditions, whether there are incomplete plums, etc. Please add the corresponding descriptions in the corresponding sections.

(4) For the training strategy, the authors obtained the results without too detailed description in the experimental chapter. The improvement in accuracy is very limited compared to the comparison experiments. If the results of this experiment were derived from only one training session, the persuasiveness of that accuracy would be very limited. I strongly suggest that for such small image sets, experiments need to be conducted using cross-validation.

(5) The English expression of the entire paper needs to be improved, please further polish the text.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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YOLO-plum: a high precision and real-time improved algorithm for plum recognition

PONE-D-23-03909R1

Dear Dr. Mu,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Feng Ding

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have provided a detailed application of object detection in this manuscript and have drawn clear conclusions through thorough experimentation and data analysis.

Reviewer #2: All my comments have been issued. Regarding the presentation of figures and equations, they have

revised the figures and equations to ensure they are clearly presented, with annotations and

centered formatting. In particular, They have increased the resolution of Figure 12 and added

annotations to the x and y axes. They have also taken great care to ensure that every sentence

is carefully reviewed and a space is added after each period.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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