AppleLeafNet: a lightweight and efficient deep learning framework for diagnosing apple leaf diseases.

Abstract

Accurately identifying apple diseases is essential to control their spread and support the industry. Timely and precise detection is crucial for managing the spread of diseases, thereby improving the production and quality of apples. However, the development of algorithms for analyzing complex leaf images remains a significant challenge. Therefore, in this study, a lightweight deep learning model is designed from scratch to identify the apple leaf condition. The developed framework comprises two stages. First, the designed 37-layer model was employed to assess the condition of apple leaves (healthy or diseased). Second, transfer learning was used for further subclassification of the disease class (e.g., rust, complex, scab, and frogeye leaf spots). The trained lightweight model was reused because the model trained with correlated images facilitated transfer learning for further classification of the disease class. A dataset available online was used to validate the proposed two-stage framework, resulting in a classification rate of 98.25% for apple leaf condition identification and an accuracy of 98.60% for apple leaf disease diagnosis. Furthermore, the results confirm that the proposed model is lightweight and involves relatively fewer learnable parameters in comparison with other pre-trained deep learning models.

Code and data availability

The paper's phenotyping input is the publicly available Kaggle 'Plant Pathology 2021 - FGVC8' apple leaf image dataset (18,632 images), explicitly cited with its public URL. No author analysis code, trained model checkpoints, or supplementary code/model deposit is mentioned in the supplied blocks.