Hybrid feature optimized CNN for rice crop disease prediction

The agricultural industry significantly relies on autonomous systems for detecting and analyzing rice diseases to minimize financial and resource losses, reduce yield reductions, improve processing efficiency, and ensure healthy crop production. Advances in deep learning have greatly enhanced disease diagnostic techniques in agriculture. Accurate identification of rice plant diseases is crucial to preventing the severe consequences these diseases can have on crop yield. Current methods often struggle with reliably diagnosing conditions and detecting issues in leaf images. Previously, leaf segmentation posed challenges, and while analyzing complex disease stages can be effective, it is computationally intensive. Therefore, segmentation methods need to be more accurate, cost-effective, and reliable. To address these challenges, we propose a hybrid bio-inspired algorithm, named the Hybrid WOA_APSO algorithm, which merges Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization (APSO) with the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA). For disease classification in rice crops, we utilize a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Multiple experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed model using benchmark datasets (Plantvillage), with a focus on feature extraction, segmentation, and preprocessing. Optimizing feature selection is a critical factor in enhancing the classification algorithm's accuracy. We compare the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of our model against industry-standard techniques such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and conventional CNN models. The experimental results indicate that the proposed hybrid approach achieves an impressive accuracy of 97.5% (Refer Table 8), which could inspire further research in this field.