Customized Weighted Ensemble Based on Modified Transfer Learning Model for Detection of Sugarcane Leaf Diseases

Sugarcane is the primary crop in the global sugar industry, yet it remains highly susceptible to a wide range of diseases that significantly impact its yield and quality. An effective solution is required to solve the issues given by manual identification of plant diseases, which is time-consuming and wasteful, as well as low detection accuracy. This paper proposes the development of a robust deep ensemble convolutional neural network (DECNN) model for the accurate detection of sugarcane leaf diseases. Initially, several transfer learning (TL) models, including EfficientNetB0, MobileNetV2, DenseNet121, NASNetMobile, and EfficientNetV2B0, were enhanced through the addition of specific layers. A comparative study was then conducted on the improved dataset. The application of data augmentation, along with the addition of dense layers, batchnormalization layers, and dropout layers, led to improved detection accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score for each model. Among the five enhanced transfer learning models, the modified EfficientNetB0 model demonstrated the highest detection accuracy, ranging from 97.08% to 98.54%. In conclusion, the DECNN model was developed by integrating the modified EfficientNetB0, MobileNetV2, and DenseNet121 models using a distinctive performance-based custom weighted ensemble method, with weight optimization carried out using the Tree-structured Parzen Estimator (TPE) technique. This resulted in a model that achieved a detection accuracy of 99.17%, outperforming the individual performances of the modified EfficientNetB0, MobileNetV2, and DenseNet121 models in detecting sugarcane leaf diseases.