Classification of coffee leaf nutrient deficiencies using hybrid feature aggregation with hierarchical localized attention and MobileNet

Objectives Nutritional deficiency in coffee is a major problem that compromises plant health, crop yield, and bean quality, directly threatening the economies of coffee-dependent regions. Traditional detection methods are primarily manual, time-consuming, and relied upon expert availability. Methods This study introduces a novel Deep Learning (DL)-based dual-track architecture designed for the efficient classification of nutritional deficiencies in coffee leaf. The first track utilizes a MobileNetV3 backbone integrated with a Multi-Convolutional Shape-Aware Kernel (MCSK) block to capture spatially adaptive features from leaf textures and vein patterns. The second track employs a Hierarchical Shuffled Group Attention Network (HSGAN), utilizing Efficient Channel Attention (ECA) and Local Group Attention (LGA) modules to balance fine-grained local variations with broad spatial dependencies. Finally, a Multidimensional Collaborative Attention (MCA) mechanism is applied to the fused features to enhance cross-channel interactions and feature extraction. Results The proposed model was evaluated using the CoLeaf dataset, where it achieved an accuracy score of 96.04%. This performance demonstrates an improvement over existing research and current state-of-the-art models, highlighting the architecture’s ability to identify complex nutrient-related patterns in coffee leaves. Conclusion The performance of the proposed DL approach offer a solution for the automated monitoring of coffee plants. By providing a reliable alternative to manual inspection, this method presents the potential to help coffee production and support the agricultural regions worldwide.