Reducing Complexity in Leaf Disease Classification Using a Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract

Agricultural production faces significant annual losses due to plant diseases, with economic impacts exceeding 40 million dollars and contributing to acute hunger affecting over 281.6 million people in 2023. The timely and accurate identification of plant diseases through leaf image analysis is crucial to mitigate these losses and ensure global food security. This study proposes a lightweight Convolutional Neural Network model, inspired by the MobileNet architecture, designed to classify various plant leaf diseases efficiently. Leveraging a publicly available dataset, this research focuses on developing a model that balances high performance with computational efficiency, making it suitable for real-world applications in resource-constrained environments. The proposed model, named LDPNet, achieved an outstanding accuracy of 99.62%, alongside precision, recall, F1-Score, and AUC metrics of 99.16%, 99.08%, 99.11%, and 99.99%, respectively. A comprehensive comparative analysis was conducted against MobileNetV2 and a reference model from previous research, highlighting the superior performance of LDPNet in terms of both accuracy and efficiency. The results demonstrate that the proposed architecture not only maintains high classification performance but also significantly reduces the number of parameters, making it a practical and scalable solution for plant disease identification. This study contributes to the growing field of agricultural technology by providing a robust, lightweight, and efficient tool for early disease detection, with the potential to enhance crop management and reduce economic losses in agriculture.