2026· Journal of Advances in Information Technology· 0 citations· 36 references
TL;DR
This study introduces a hybrid deep learning architecture that integrates squeeze-and-excitation residual blocks, capsule networks, bidirectional long short-term memory, and attention mechanisms, enabling farmers to obtain rapid, reliable, and cost-effective field diagnoses, thereby improving agricultural productivity and sustainability.
Abstract
—The existence of plant leaf diseases is a big problem for farmers all over the world because they make crops less healthy and less plentiful, which puts global food security at risk. The most common problems with diagnosing plant leaf diseases are a lack of experience, different ways of undertaking visual assessments, and image overlaps, all of which can lead to wrong diagnoses. This study introduces a hybrid deep learning architecture that integrates squeeze-and-excitation residual blocks, capsule networks, bidirectional long short-term memory, and attention mechanisms. The design utilizes convolutional operators for effective feature extraction, Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) block for channel reweighting, capsule networks for spatial relationship capture Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) for sequential dependencies, and attention mechanisms for emphasizing prominent features. Experiments were performed on 2 empirical datasets: the Corn Leaf Disease Dataset (CLDD) and the Rice Leaf Disease Dataset (RLDD). The data were divided into 60% for training, 20% for validation, and 20% for testing. The proposed method attained 99.88% training accuracy on CLDD and 100% on RLDD. During testing, the class-wise accuracies were 99.29% for blight and 100% for the other CLDD categories. In the case of RLDD, the accuracies attained were 78.95% for bacterial leaf blight, 85.53% for brown spot, 89.77% for healthy samples, 77.27% for leaf blast, 100% for leaf scald, and 97.73% for narrow brown spot. This work highlights practical potential for deployment in terms of mobile applications, enabling farmers to obtain rapid, reliable, and cost-effective field diagnoses, thereby improving agricultural productivity and sustainability.
Findings confirm that the hybrid CNN–Transformer architecture effectively enhances classification performance, robustness, and generalization in coffee leaf disease classification, with potential applications in precision agriculture and data-driven crop management.
This study presents a novel CNN for multi-class classification of 38 diseases, demonstrating an effective balance between predictive performance and computational efficiency, positioning the model as a promising tool for real-world agricultural deployment.
This study proposes a novel deep learning approach that takes into account both the specific visual characteristics of plant diseases and potential disturbances in the microstructure, such as surface irregularities or prominent leaf veins, which may mislead the model.
J. Hoffmann, Christopher Mai, Ricardo Buettner· PLoS ONE· 0 citations
Plant diseases have long been considered a major threat to global food production systems. Therefore, early diagnosis is vital to mitigate the risk of these diseases. This task can be challenging, as the number of harmful diseases is substantial. One technology that has gained widespread interest is artificial intelligence, specifically deep learning, which is used to identify plant diseases using leaf patterns. This paper presents two deep learning models, a custom CNN model and a transfer learning model based on the DenseNet-121 architecture. Experiments were carried out using the PlantCity dataset, which consists of twelve subsets of diverse crop species representing fruits, vegetables, and grains with variations among the subsets, including the number of classes, the subset sizes, class distribution, and visual complexity of disease symptoms. The two models were evaluated using multiple metrics, including accuracy, loss, precision, recall, and F1-score. Explainable AI using the LIME technique was deployed to better interpret the acquired results. Results showed that the developed transfer learning model based on DenseNet-121 had superior performance over the CNN model, with accuracies ranging from 86% to 99% across eleven experimented crops. In order to perform an independent experimental validation for the developed model, future work will focus on constructing a local crop dataset captured from Iraqi fields to evaluate the developed models based on the local environment.
H. Jeiad, S. Samaan, Omar Janeh et al.· Automation· 0 citations
Introduction Maize is one of the most important food crops in the world, and foliar diseases can lead to significant yield losses if identification is not performed on time. Experts conducting manual inspections find it less effective and more subjective. Deep learning-based approaches utilizing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformers (ViTs) have been demonstrated as a viable approach to automate disease diagnosis. Thus, while CNNs fail to capture wider context due to their local feature focus and ViTs need larger datasets and tend to miss finer-grained details. To overcome these limitations, we present EDISP a hybrid framework that connects Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformers (ViTs) for local feature extraction, as well as global contextual learning. Methods The EDISP framework brings together the strengths of CNNs and ViTs to overcome their individual weaknesses. It is trained on a dataset that includes both controlled-environment and real-field maize leaf images, which helps it handle different environmental conditions. The data undergoes thorough preprocessing, including normalization, augmentation, and stratified splitting into training, validation, and test sets to support generalization. The CNN focuses on detailed local disease features, while the ViT captures broader contextual information across the maize leaf surfaces. Results The proposed EDISP model significantly outperforms standalone CNN and ViT Models in multiple performance metrics, achieving an overall classification accuracy of 99.40%, precision of 99.43%, recall of 99.38%, and an F1-score of 99.40%. Experimental results demonstrate that EDISP excels in identifying maize leaf diseases, including Common Rust, Gray Leaf Spot, Northern Leaf Blight, and Healthy leaves, with minimal false positives and negatives. External validation with an independent dataset further highlights the model’s robustness and ability to generalize to real-world conditions. Discussion The EDISP hybrid architecture, integrating CNNs and ViTs, provides a stronger method for accurate, automated maize leaf disease detection. Its robust performance, consistent results on controlled and field datasets shows robustness in diverse environments. However, EDISP’s effectiveness may be limited by image quality, lighting, or disease types not seen in training. These results highlight the promise of hybrid deep learning in precision agriculture and offer a scalable solution for disease detection, supporting farmers without expert diagnostic resources.
Aziz Ullah, Shah Hussain, Qi Hou et al.· Frontiers in Plant Science· 0 citations
Performance evaluation using accuracy, model size, time per image, and number of parameters showed that the proposed model achieved high accuracy and provided better discrimination between visually similar disease classes.