Enhancing sustainability in the production of palm oil: creative monitoring methods using YOLOv7 and YOLOv8 for effective plantation management

Highlights • YOLOv8m achieves an impressive 99.31 % F1-score, setting a new standard for precision agriculture in identifying oil palm plants.• YOLOv8s drastically reduces detection times, revolutionizing real-time monitoring and broad environmental surveys in agriculture.• Utilizing over 80,000 photos for training, our model ensures robust and reliable predictions for drone-captured images of oil palms.• YOLO models enhance sustainable agriculture by accurately identifying oil palm trees, optimizing crop management and resource allocation.