Comparative Analysis of Transfer Learning, LeafNet, and Modified LeafNet Models for Accurate Rice Leaf Diseases Classification

Early detection of plant diseases is essential for effective crop disease management to prevent yield loss. In this study, we developed a methodology for classifying diseases in rice leaves using four deep learning models and a dataset with 2658 images of healthy and diseased rice leaves. Four models, namely LeafNet, Modified LeafNet, MobileNetV2, and Xception, were compared. The Modified LeafNet model involved updates to LeafNet’s architectural parameters, whereas transfer learning techniques were applied to the MobileNetV2 and Xception pretrained models. The optimal hyperparameters for training were determined by considering several factors such as batch size, data augmentation, learning rate, and optimizers. The Modified LeafNet model achieved the highest accuracies of 97.44% and 87.76% for the validation and testing datasets, respectively. In comparison, LeafNet obtained 88.92% and 71.84%, Xception obtained 88.64% and 71.95%, and MobileNetV2 obtained 82.10% and 67.68% for the validation and test accuracies on the same datasets, respectively. This study contributes to the development of automated disease classification systems for rice leaves, thereby leading to increased agricultural productivity and sustainability.