The Effects of Synthetic Data and Label Distribution on Canola Branch Counting

Collecting annotated plant images for automated phenotyping is often slow and expensive. Plant models simulating growth and development can generate unlimited synthetic images with exact labels. However, previous work has established that whether incorporating synthetic data improves performance depends on the ratio of synthetic to real images and the label distribution of the synthetic dataset. To systematically quantify both factors, we train ResNet-18 models on a canola branch-counting task using a calibrated L-system plant model. We vary each factor independently. Synthetic-to-real ratios