Detection of coconut leaf diseases using enhanced deep learning techniques

Abstract

Coconut farming is a significant agricultural activity in South India, but the coconut trees face challenges due to adverse weather conditions and environmental factors. These challenges include various leaf diseases and pest infestations. Identifying and locating these issues can be difficult because of the large foliage and shading provided by the coconut trees. Recent research has shown that Computer Vision algorithms are becoming increasingly important for solving problems related to object identification and detection. So, in this work, the YOLOv4 algorithm was employed to detect and pinpoint diseases and infections in coconut leaves from images. The YOLOv4 model incorporates advanced features such as cross-stage partial connections, spatial pyramid pooling, contextual feature selection, and path-based aggregation. These features enhance the model’s ability to efficiently identify issues such as yellowing and drying of leaves, pest infections, and leaf flaccidity in coconut leaf images taken in various environmental conditions. Furthermore, the model’s predictive accuracy was enhanced through multi-scale feature detection, PANet feature learning, and adaptive bounding boxes. These improvements resulted in an impressive 88% F1-Score and an 85% Mean Average Precision. The model demonstrates its effectiveness and robustness even when dealing with medium-resolution images, offering improved accuracy and speed in disease and pest detection on coconut leaves.