A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Automated Detection and Classification of Maize Leaf Diseases

Food security continues to be a significant challenge the world over, with crop production becoming increasingly threatened by crop diseases and pest infestations. In the case of chili production, farmers often suffer significant yield loss and economic insecurity due to the unpredictable nature of both of these problems. Current pest control options (agrochemical and organic methods alike) have not reliably been enough for timely and effective control and demonstrate the importance of early and effective pest and disease identification processes. To solve this problem, the present work describes a deep learning implementation that leverages advanced YOLO-based architectures for the detection and classification of leaf diseases and pest on chili plant leaves. The present work trains and evaluates three models (YOLOv5, YOLOv7, and YOLOv8) on a newly created and balanced dataset of over 28,800 images combining 20 total classes of pest and leaf diseases. The dataset was supplemented by preprocessing the images and conducting an augmentation process to create a total of 32,000 images for training to generate reliable models. The results from the experiments found that YOLOv8 provided the best baseline performance of 95.1% mean Average Precision (mAP), while YOLOv5 had an mAP of 86.1%, and YOLOv7 had an mAP of 67.5%. An additional enhancement in the construction of a Modified YOLOv8 hybrid model—reflecting all advantages of YOLOv5, YOLOv7, and YOLOv8—achieved a highest mAP of 99.5% to be the most effective model in this study, the results suggest that the newly proposed Modified YOLOv8 framework, is highly accurate and reliable for the early detection of pests and diseases in chili, and is helpful to improve sustainable agricultural practices, mitigate crop losses, and increase global food security.

<p>The detection of leaf diseases using modern technology has significant importance in agriculture and artificial intelligence. Deep learning, specifically, plays a crucial role in this field, as it enables accurate and efficient disease classification. Early detection of leaf diseases is vital to implementing timely treatments and preventing widespread damage to leaves. Leaf diseases can be caused by various factors, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other pathogens. Among them, bacteria and viruses are the most invasive and can lead to substantial yield losses if not identified and treated promptly. Bacterial and viral infections are common in agricultural settings, affecting leaves of all types and ages. Our research aims to propose a transfer learning-based model for predicting leaf diseases using a dataset of leaf images. The images will be classified into healthy or diseased leaves based on extracted features. The proposed model, named Leaf Disease Transfer Learning Algorithm (LDTLA), demonstrates promising results with an average accuracy of 97.37% on the dataset. Utilizing convolutional neural networks (CNN) and deep learning techniques, our LDTLA model outperforms previous quantitative and qualitative research studies in leaf disease detection. This advanced approach to leaf disease identification holds the potential to revolutionize agriculture by enabling farmers to make informed decisions, implement targeted treatments, and minimize leaf losses caused by diseases.<strong></strong></p>

Deep learning, a powerful subset of artificial intelligence, has emerged as a transformative tool in various domains, including agriculture, due to its ability to autonomously analyze complex data. This study focuses on the application of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for detecting and classifying diseases affecting tobacco leaves, a major concern in countries like India, one of the largest producers of tobacco. India produces an estimated 804 million kg of tobacco annually, with cultivation spanning half of its states. Traditional methods relying on manual inspection by farmers are time-consuming, subjective, and often inaccurate, leading to crop losses and reduced productivity. To overcome these challenges, this research developed a deep learning-based model leveraging real-time images of diseased tobacco leaves provided by farmers from the Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh. A dataset comprising over 1000 annotated images depicting three distinct tobacco leaf diseases was curated for training and validation. The CNN model achieved an impressive accuracy of 95%, demonstrating its ability to accurately detect and classify diseases, enabling targeted interventions. The study not only underscores the efficiency of CNNs in revolutionizing disease detection but also highlights their role in reducing crop losses, improving yield, and supporting farmers with timely and unbiased disease diagnosis. By incorporating advanced image processing techniques and deep learning, this research provides a scalable, automated, and cost-effective solution to a pressing agricultural challenge, paving the way for improved crop management and sustainable farming practices.

Plant leaves and crops play a crucial role as a primary food source globally, making significant contributions to dietary iron intake (9%) and energy consumption (23%) per capita in the Asian region. Bacterial, yeast, and other microbial diseases pose significant challenges to farmers as they detrimentally impact plant health and reduce crop productivity. The manual diagnosis of these diseases poses a considerable challenge, particularly in regions with a scarcity of professionals specializing in leaves and crop protection. Automating leaf disease detection and providing easily accessible decision-support resources are crucial for facilitating efficient leaf protection strategies and mitigating crop damage. Despite multiple classification methods for diagnosing leaf diseases, a secure and accurate approach that fulfills these requirements has not yet been identified. This paper presents an architectural framework called Lightweight Federated Transfer Learning (LFTL) that addresses the challenge of Leaf Disease Detection and Classification (LDDC) while ensuring data privacy limitations are upheld. A dataset consisting of leaf disease images has been compiled, characterized by an imbalance in the distribution of the diseases. The collection includes four conditions: bacterial decay, brown spot, blast, and tungro, corresponding image counts of 1695, 1551, 1711, and 1419, respectively. Following the preprocessing stage, the LFTL framework was tested using both Independent and Identically Distributed (IID) and non-IID datasets. The study commenced with an efficacy evaluation of the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and eight TL models in the LDDC. The framework’s performance was evaluated across different circumstances and compared to conventional and federated learning models. The study’s findings revealed that the LFTL framework outperformed traditional distributed deep-learning classifiers, thus demonstrating its efficacy in individual and multiple client scenarios.

This composition bargains with the Tomato leaf infection discovery and classification utilizing different strategies like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Regions with CNN (R-CNN), Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN. The main issue in the agricultural sector is leaf diseases, which have an impact on crop yield and financial gain. Early detection of leaf diseases in plants is essential to prevent losses to the agricultural sector. There are several tomato leaf diseases that affect the crop's leaves, including the Mosaic virus, Early Blight, Healthy, Septoria leaf, and Bacterial spot. Using deep learning algorithms and image processing methods, we can identify the diseases in tomato leaves using developing deep learning approaches. The implementation procedures in our proposed work involves data collection, pre-processing, training, feature extraction, testing, and classification utilising the Visual Geometry Group (VGG 16) to identify damaged or healthy leaves. VGG 16 is incorporated to categorise the leaves as healthy or diseased based on the data and Regression's boundary box method is adopted. Therefore, using Faster RCNN, a model is created to identify and categorise diseases from every image of a tomato leaf that is used as an input, providing a forecast with a considerably greater degree of accuracy. We obtain an accuracy of approximately 98% after fitting the collected features into the neural network over 20 iterations.

In recent years, plant leaf diseases has become a widespread problem for which an accurate research and rapid application of deep learning in plant disease classification is required, tomato is also one of the most important plants and seeds which are used worldwide for cooking in either dried or fresh form, tomato are a great source of protein that offer many health benefits, but there are a lot of diseases associated with tomato leaf which hinder its production. Thus, an accurate classification of tomato leaf diseases is needed to solve the problem in the early stage. A deep learning approach is proposed to identify and classify leaf disease by using public dataset of leaf image and CNN model with the open source library TensorFlow. In this project, we proposed a method to classify tomato leaf disease and to find and describe the efficient network architecture (hyper parameters and optimization methods). Moreover, after applying each architecture separately, we compared their obtained results to find out the best architecture configuration for classifying tomato leaf diseases and their results. Furthermore, to satisfy the classification requirements, the model was trained using CNN architecture check if we could get faster training times, higher accuracy and easier retraining. Deep learning is a branch of artificial intelligence. In recent years, with the advantages of automatic learning and feature extraction, it has been widely concerned by academic and industrial circles. It has been widely used in image and video processing, voice processing, and natural language processing. At the same time, it has also become a research hotspot in the field of agricultural plant protection, such as plant disease recognition. The application of deep learning in plant disease recognition can avoid the disadvantages caused by artificial selection of disease spot features, make plant disease feature extraction more objective, and improve the research efficiency and technology transformation speed. This review provides the research progress of deep learning technology in the field of crop leaf disease identification in recent years. In this project, we present the current trends and challenges for the detection of plant leaf disease using deep learning and advanced imaging techniques. We hope that this project will be a valuable resource for researchers who study the detection of plant diseases. At the same time, we also discussed some of the current challenges and problems that need to be resolved.

Abstract: This paper proposes an advanced convolutional neural network (ECNN) for the automatic detection and classification of leaf diseases towards precision agriculture. The proposed approach was tested on a standard plant leaf dataset with 54,306 images belonging to 38 classes of leaf diseases, with an 80:20 train/test split. Multi-scale convolutional layers and an attention refinement layer were incorporated to enhance the robustness of the approach in complex field environments. The experimental results show that the proposed ECNN approach resulted in an overall classification accuracy of 98.7%, with precision, recall, and F1-measure values of 98.4%, 98.6%, and 98.5%, respectively. Compared with the latest state-of-the-art models such as EnConv, EfficientNet-B0, and hybrid CNN models, the proposed approach improved the accuracy by 2.1% and reduced the computational complexity by 18.3%. The proposed approach was also found to be reliable in early-stage disease detection and under varying illumination conditions, making it suitable for real-time implementation in smart farming systems. Keywords: Leaf Disease Detection, Enhanced CNN, Precision Agriculture, Attention Mechanism and Deep Learning

Plant diseases are a severe threat to the environment, economy, and health. Early disease identification remains a challenging task in Iraq due to the scarce of the necessary resources and infrastructure. This paper uses various deep learning algorithms to detect different diseases on plant leaves and detect healthy ones, using an RGB camera as a crucial part of our real-time autonomous greenhouses' robot along with using two datasets, plant-village and cotton dataset, to investigate the best convolutional neural network architecture. The first dataset contained 10,190 images from the plant-village open datasets; it includes four crops with ten distinct classes of diseased and healthy leaves. Moreover, the cotton dataset contained 2,204 images for training and 106 images for testing; it has four classes of diseased and healthy plants and leaves. Different network architectures were tested in this paper for the best suitable lightweight architecture for our mobile robot. Results show that the best performance is 99.908% which achieved by the VGG16 network. The highest accuracy of VGG16 obtained in our research makes it the best tool for our autonomous plant disease detection robot. Index Terms— Convolutional neural networks architectures, Computer vision, Deep learning, Leaf disease detection and classification, Precision agriculture.

Maize, a vital global food crop, is susceptible to various diseases impacting agricultural yield and quality, necessitating effective monitoring strategies. This study presents a comprehensive approach utilizing advanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture for efficient maize leaf disease detection and classification. Leveraging datasets from Kaggle, Harvard Dataverse, and Mendeley, the proposed CNN maize disease detection (MDD) system integrates optimization techniques, data augmentation, batch size adjustments, and fine-tuning strategies. Evaluation through data splitting reveals significant correlations among maize leaf classifications and the influence of data augmentation on image quality. Following training, the CNN-MDD model is deployed on a Microcontroller Unit (MCU) simulation, achieving promising optimization parameters: latency of 7.60 ms, RAM size of 726.60 KB, classifier flash size of 344.70 KB, and an accuracy of 94.60 %. These optimized parameters align well with MCU specifications, highlighting the potential for practical deployment on low-cost edge devices like Arduino Ble 33 Sense. Additionally, this research contributes to the creation of a Ghanaian maize crop pest and disease dataset and the development of an optimal and cost-effective CNN-MDD MCU edge device, aiming to provide local farmers in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa with a swift, offline solution for maize disease detection, thus fostering sustainable agricultural practices. We conduct a comparative analysis of Edge Impulse and TensorFlow, two prominent machine-learning platforms for TinyML model development and deployment in various applications, including smart crop disease detection. Utilizing a dataset comprising 12,344 raw images and 7,454 augmented images of healthy and diseased maize leaves, we evaluate the workflow, features, performance, and usability of each platform. Our findings indicate that Edge Impulse holds a slight advantage over TensorFlow in terms of ease of use, reliability, and memory footprint, whereas TensorFlow offers greater flexibility, customization options, and higher accuracy. We conclude that while both platforms are suitable for crop disease detection, a combined approach allows for leveraging TensorFlow's robust training capabilities for complex neural networks alongside the simplicity of Edge Impulse for deploying models on low-powered edge devices. This synergistic approach enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of crop disease detection systems, ultimately benefiting agricultural practices and food security.

Botanical plants suffer from several types of diseases that must be identified early to improve the production of fruits and vegetables. Mango fruit is one of the most popular and desirable fruits worldwide due to its taste and richness in vitamins. However, plant diseases also affect these plants’ production and quality. This study proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based metaheuristic approach for disease diagnosis and detection. The proposed approach involves preprocessing, image segmentation, feature extraction, and disease classification. First, the image of mango leaves is enhanced using histogram equalization and contrast enhancement. Then, a geometric mean-based neutrosophic with a fuzzy c-means method is used for segmentation. Next, the essential features are retrieved from the segmented images, including the Upgraded Local Binary Pattern (ULBP), color, and pixel features. Finally, these features are given into the disease detection phase, which is modeled using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) (deep learning model). Furthermore, to enhance the classification accuracy of CNN, the weights are fine-tuned using a new hybrid optimization model referred to as Cat Swarm Updated Black Widow Model (CSUBW). The new hybrid optimization model is developed by hybridizing the standard Cat Swarm Optimization Algorithm (CSO) and Black Widow Optimization Algorithm (BWO). Finally, a performance evaluation is undergone to validate the efficiency of the projected model.

Cotton is one of the most important cash crops worldwide, and its productivity is severely affected by leaf diseases that reduce yield and fiber quality. Traditional disease identification methods rely on expert knowledge and manual inspection, which are time-consuming, subjective, and often impractical for large-scale agricultural monitoring. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), have enabled automated, accurate, and scalable cotton leaf disease identification using image-based analysis. This review comprehensively analyzes state-of-the-art AI techniques employed for cotton leaf disease detection and classification. It covers conventional image processing approaches, handcrafted feature-based machine learning models, and modern deep learning architecture such as convolutional neural networks, transformers, ensemble learning, and explainable AI frameworks. Additionally, the role of publicly available datasets, data augmentation, lightweight models, and resource-efficient architectures is discussed. By synthesizing findings from recent literature, this review highlights key research trends, performance improvements, and practical limitations of existing approaches. The paper also identifies critical challenges and future research directions to support the development of robust, interpretable, and deployable AI-based systems for precision cotton agriculture.

Application of machine learning techniques in rice leaf disease detection

Convolutional neural network (CNN) models have been used extensively in many image recognition tasks for their state-of-the-art performance in recent years. Researchers inspired by this success frequently prefer CNNs in the agricultural field, especially for disease detection and classification. Many CNN models have been proposed for plant leaf diseases and impressive performance results have been obtained. On the other hand, standard CNNs usually need millions of parameters in the network for computation, but it is difficult to implement them on embedded and mobile devices with limited resources. Therefore, it is important to obtain lighter models by decreasing the number of parameters in addition to the high performance of the models. In this paper, a new hybrid CNN approach based on Inception architecture and depthwise separable convolutions is proposed to reduce the number of parameters and computational cost for plant leaf disease detection and classification. Although the number of parameters is significantly reduced, the results show that the proposed approach has high accuracy performance. The proposed hybrid model has been trained and tested with k-fold cross-validation using a dataset of 50,136 images containing 30 classes from 14 different leaves, including healthy and diseased ones. The new model has achieved the best accuracy of 99.27% and an average accuracy of 99%, and provides about a 75% reduction in the number of parameters compared to the standard CNN.

Agriculture field has a high impact on our life. Agriculture is the most important sector of our Economy. Proper management leads to a profit in agricultural products. Farmers do not expertise in leaf disease, so they produce less production. Plant leaf diseases detection is the important because profit and loss are depending on production. CNN is the solution for leaf disease detection and classification. Main aim of this research is to detect the apple, grape, corn, potato and tomato plants leaf diseases. Plant leaf diseases are monitoring of large fields of crops disease detection, and thus automatically detected some feature of diseases as per that provide medical treatment. Proposed Deep CNN model has been compared with popular transfer learning approach such as VGG16. Plant leaf disease detection has wide range of applications available in various fields such as Biological Research and in Agriculture Institute. Plant leaf disease detection is the one of the required research topics as it may prove benefits in monitoring large fields of crops, and thus automatically detect the symptoms of diseases as soon as they appear on plant leaves. Key Words: Diseases, CNN, Deep Learning

Plant leaf diseases pose significant challenges to agricultural productivity, necessitating early detection and intervention strategies. Recent research has increasingly turned to artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, particularly image processing and deep learning, to address these challenges. The paper provides a technical view of the application of Artificial Intelligence in plant leaf disease detection. Key aspects covered include datasets, image processing methodologies, deep learning algorithms, and evaluation metrics commonly utilized in this domain. An emphasis is placed on the important role of annotated datasets in the training of AI models, facilitating the development of accurate classification systems. Image processing techniques, encompassing tasks such as enhancement, segmentation, and feature extraction, are discussed for their role in preprocessing leaf images to extract salient features. Deep learning algorithms, notably convolutional neural networks (CNNs), are highlighted for their effectiveness in automatically learning discriminative features from input images and achieving high accuracy rates in disease classification tasks. The paper illuminates the significance of employing evaluation metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score as quantitative benchmarks to gauge the efficacy of model performance. It highlights the triumphs observed across diverse studies harnessing AI methodologies for the detection of plant leaf diseases, emphasizing their transformative capacity in reshaping agricultural management paradigms. Future research directions are outlined, including the exploration of transfer learning methods to capitalize on pre-trained models and the integration of additional sensing technologies like hyperspectral imaging and drones for enhanced disease detection capabilities. These advancements are poised to further refine the accuracy and efficiency of plant leaf disease detection systems, thereby offering substantial benefits to agriculture and food production sectors.