Machine Learning and Deep Learning for Plant Disease Detection: A Review of Techniques and Trends

Plant diseases pose a significant threat to global agricultural productivity, making early and accurate detection critical for yield protection and food security. This study evaluates the evolution, effectiveness, and practical applicability of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) models for plant disease detection while analyzing research trends to identify leading models, data limitations, and implementation challenges. A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis were conducted using the PRISMA framework, examining 625 peer-reviewed articles published between 2017 and 2025 from major databases. The analysis highlights the most influential studies, commonly used datasets, and top-performing ML/DL models, assessed in terms of accuracy, methodology, dataset type, and real-time deployment potential. Results show that models such as YOLOv4, VGG19, ResNet50, and MobileNetV2 achieved accuracy levels between 98% and 99.99%, with most trained on the PlantVillage dataset or custom annotated datasets. Several studies demonstrated successful real-time deployment via mobile and edge-device applications. However, key challenges remain, including limited dataset diversity, poor model generalization across environments, and reduced performance under real-field conditions. This study provides a comprehensive overview of progress in AI-based plant disease detection, emphasizing the need for lightweight, adaptable, and field-ready models to support scalable real-world deployment.