Efficacy of chili plant diseases classification using deep learning: a preliminary study

Plant disease classification using deep learning techniques is a popular research area due to the numerous opportunities for introducing advance and robust classifiers. Nevertheless, classifying chilli plant diseases accurately from images under uncontrolled environment and various imaging conditions remains unsolved due to the lack of chilli disease image datasets. In this study, the efficacy of three high-performance deep learning algorithms, namely VGG16, InceptionV3, and EfficientNetB0, in classifying three types of chilli leaves diseases, namely upward curling, mosaic/mottling, and the bacterial spot, is demonstrated. These methods are popularly used for other plant disease classifications due to their effectiveness. The experiments were performed on the 3,000 chilli plant disease images collected from three different field environments in Selangor, Malaysia. The images were captured with a complex background and various illuminations, angles, and distances to reflect the real-life scenarios. The complexity of the collected images was created based on the taxonomic information of chilli leaves diseases and the unavailability of chilli disease images under various imaging conditions in the publicly available plant disease databases. Experimented using appropriate specifications, the models demonstrated outstanding performance with more than 95% accuracy with the highest accuracy of 98.83% by InceptionV3