Development of a Machine Learning-Driven Web Platform for Automated Identification of Rice Insect Pests

An advanced machine learning (ML)-driven web platform was developed and deployed to automate the identification of rice insect pests, addressing limitations associated with traditional pest detection methods and conventional ML algorithms.Historically, pest identification in rice cultivation has relied on expert evaluation of pest species and their associated crop damage, a process that is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and prone to inaccuracies, particularly in the misclassification of pest species.In this study, a subset of the publicly available IP102 benchmark dataset, consisting of 7,736 images across 12 rice pest categories, was curated for model training and evaluation.Two classification models-a Support Vector Machine (SVM) and a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based on the Inception ResNetV2 architecture-were implemented and assessed using standard performance metrics.Experimental results demonstrated that the Inception ResNetV2 model significantly outperformed SVM, achieving an accuracy of 99.97%, a precision of 99.46%, a recall of 99.81%, and an F1-score of 99.53%.Owing to its superior performance, the Inception ResNetV2 model was integrated into a web-based application designed for real-time pest identification.The deployed system exhibited an average response time of 5.70 seconds, representing a notable improvement in operational efficiency and usability over previous implementations.The results underscore the potential of artificial intelligence in transforming agricultural practices by enabling accurate, scalable, and timely pest diagnostics, thereby enhancing pest management strategies, mitigating crop losses, and supporting global food security initiatives.