<![CDATA[Assessing oil palm fruit ripeness is essential for optimizing harvest timing and maximizing market value. In many developing regions, harvesting is still performed every 10–15 days through manual visual inspection, a process prone to human error that often causes premature harvesting and reduces selling value by up to 50%. This study explores deep learning-based object detection for automatic classification of oil palm fruit bunches. A dataset of 4,578 annotated high-resolution images was prepared and categorized into six ripeness classes: Empty, Immature, Underripe, Abnormal, Ripe, and Overripe. Two advanced detection models, YOLOv8s and Faster R-CNN with a ResNet-50 backbone, were evaluated under identical conditions using precision, recall, and mean Average Precision (mAP) metrics. YOLOv8s achieved precision and recall above 99%, with a mAP 0.5:0.95 of 0.9254, demonstrating strong reliability and efficiency for real-time use. Faster R-CNN achieved a higher mAP 0.5 of 0.9964, indicating superior localization accuracy but slower computation. Overall, YOLOv8s provides a better trade-off between accuracy and speed, making it more practical for automated harvesting. This research supports precision agriculture by emphasizing AI-driven solutions that improve productivity, minimize losses, and promote sustainable palm oil management.]]>
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