When Ground-Truth Fidelity Matters: An Orchestrated UAS Framework for Wheat Streak Mosaic Virus Detection Using Vision Transformers and Machine Learning

The paper presents an automated pipeline that uses unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) multispectral imagery and a Vision Transformer to detect wheat streak mosaic virus (WSMV) at the plant level. While the model achieved 89% accuracy on over 6,500 test patches using treatment-based labels, ELISA-based ground truth revealed significant label noise, indicating that the high accuracy was largely due to label bias rather than true disease detection. When evaluated against more reliable row‑level symptom severity and plant‑level ELISA labels, both deep learning and classical machine learning models showed limited generalization and weak separability between infected and mock‑inoculated plants, underscoring the importance of biologically grounded labels and realistic data conditions for UAS‑based disease detection.