Automated Leaf Disease Detection using a Hybrid CNN-BiLSTM Model for Smart Agriculture

The mitigation of crop losses and the sustainability of agriculture rely on the prompt identification of foliar diseases. In large-scale agriculture, conventional identification methods such as expert eye inspections are inefficient, susceptible to errors, and labour-intensive. A growing number of individuals are seeking automated methods to monitor plant health, given that the majority of Indians are employed in agriculture. This study presents a hybrid DL strategy for leaf disease detection, encompassing preprocessing, segmentation, feature extraction, and model training. Initially, images are processed to enhance their quality and uniformity. The impacted regions of the leaf are subsequently categorised by K-Means clustering. The classification accuracy is improved by utilising several feature extraction methods. The proposed model, CNBiLS, integrates bidirectional LSTM layers with convolutional layers to leverage the spatial and sequential information in image data. When evaluated against contemporary state-of-the-art models, CNBiLS exhibited superior performance, achieving an exceptional 99.84% classification accuracy. This result underscores the model's accuracy in identifying various leaf diseases. Ultimately, CNBiLS offers a precise, scalable, and robust automated system for detecting leaf diseases, equipping farmers with timely information to manage illnesses effectively, so enhancing both the quality and yield of their crops.