Cucumber Disease Image Classification with A Model Combining LBP and VGG-16 Features

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a significant horticultural crop worldwide, highly valued for both fresh consumption and processing. However, cucumber cultivation faces challenges due to diseases that can substantially reduce yield and quality. Diseases like leaf spots, stem wilt, and fruit rot are caused by pathogens including viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Traditionally, disease detection in cucumbers is performed manually, which is time-consuming and inefficient. Therefore, developing machine vision-based models using Deep Learning (DL) and Machine Learning (ML) for early disease detection through image analysis is crucial for assisting farmers. While many studies on plant disease classification using various DL and ML models show optimal results, research on cucumbers has mostly focused on leaf diseases. This study aims to optimize cucumber disease image classification by developing a model that combines Local Binary Pattern (LBP) texture features and VGG-16 convolutional features. The dataset used, Cucumber Disease Recognition Dataset consists of 8 classes of cucumber plant disease images covering leaves, stems, and fruits. This study classifies cucumber plant disease images using Random Forest (RF) combined with LBP texture features and VGG-16 visual features and compares its performance with models using VGG-16, LBP+RF, and VGG-16+RF on the same dataset. The results show that the proposed model achieved a precision of 84.7%, recall of 84%, F1-Score of 83.8%, and accuracy of 84%. These results outperform the comparative models, demonstrating the effectiveness of the combined approach in classifying cucumber plant diseases.