Deep Learning-Based Potato Leaf Disease Detection Using Transfer Learning and Explainable AI Techniques

Objectives: To create a multi-class image classification system to automate the detection of potato crop diseases using deep learning algorithms to classify images of potato leaves. Method: This study involves an implementing and comparing of six deep learning models to classify potato leaves as diseased or infected with pests. The models included a custom CNN as the baseline and five transfer-learning models: VGG16, DenseNet121, MobileNetV2, Xception, and InceptionV3. The final selected model was InceptionV3 due to its ability to extract strong features and achieve superior overall classification performance among all evaluated models. To enhance model’s performance and improve generalization to unseen data, several techniques were implemented, including data augmentation, Batch Normalization, Dropout regularization, and selective fine-tuning of deeper layers. Findings: The proposed model achieved the highest test accuracy (94%) and macro-average F1-score (0.94) compared to other baseline models. The importance of fine-tuning is reflected in the high accuracy of the proposed model. An ablation study found that accuracy dropped to 84.67% without fine-tuning, which demonstrates how critical it is for this model’s domain adaptation. The Grad-CAM analysis showed that the model focuses on biologically relevant areas of the leaves with infection and does not concentrate on backgrounds; therefore, the results indicate the model’s potential for interpretability and deployment in real-world settings. Novelty: This study improves potato leaf disease detection using a fine-tuned InceptionV3 with data augmentation and dropout, while Grad-CAM visualizations enhance model interpretability, reliability, and practical utility for accurate agricultural disease diagnosis. Keywords: PotatoLeaf Disease Detection, Deep Learning, Transfer Learning, InceptionV3, Image Classification, Grad-CAM, Sustainable Agriculture