VGGBM-Net: A Novel Pixel-Based Transfer Features Engineering for Automated Coffee Bean Diseases Classification

Although coffee is a crucial commodity for developing nations’ economies, processing defects can significantly impact the safety, commercial value, and quality of coffee beans. Traditional coffee bean grading methods are labor-intensive and prone to error, necessitating automated and accurate classification of bean diseases. This study proposes a novel transfer learning-based deep neural network, VGGBM-Net, for classifying coffee bean diseases. It focuses on the timely and precise identification of diseases to improve export quality without compromising safety during production. In this research, the proposed approach is trained using a dataset USK-Coffee of coffee beans to classify healthy and unhealthy beans. The performance of multiple machine learning classifiers, including Random Forest (RF), Logistic Regression (LoR), LightGBM (LGBM), and K-Nearest Neighbor Classifier (KNC), is evaluated alongside neural network techniques such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and VGG-19. A novel transformation of the VGG-19 model for feature engineering based on transfer learning is introduced, where spatial features extracted from coffee bean images are transformed into class prediction probabilities using LGBM. These enhanced features are then used as inputs for advanced machine-learning algorithms. Unlike traditional models, this feature extraction enhances classification accuracy and robustness. This transformation improves feature extraction by capturing more discriminative patterns, leading to superior performance compared to conventional methods. Experimental results highlight the superior performance of the LGBM classifier, achieving an impressive 99% accuracy, recall, f1, and precision score of 98% with a computational runtime of just 0.084 seconds. K-fold cross-validation ensured the robustness of the models, and optimization techniques were applied to fine-tune parameters for maximum accuracy. This research establishes a highly effective framework for automated coffee bean classification, setting a benchmark for future studies in agricultural image analysis.