Machine Learning Based Solution for Improving the Efficiency of Sugar Production in Sri Lanka

Although sugar is a popularly used commodity in Sri Lanka, sugar manufactured within the country fulfill only a very small portion of the demanded amount. Sugar production is an intricate process which requires a considerable amount of expertise especially in the areas of cultivation, production and revenue prediction which may not exist in novice farmers. This research proposes a methodology which provides novice sugarcane farmers with expert knowledge on four main areas related to farming including weather forecast, sugarcane maturity estimation, production forecast and prediction of return sugarcane amounts from lands. ARIMA model is used for weather forecast whereas machine learning methods and multiple regression models were used for sugarcane maturity estimation and production of forecasts and returns respectively. The final ARIMA time series model was validated with p-value greater than 0.05 for Ljung-Box test with three different lag values. The Support Vector Machines model was identified as the best model with an accuracy of 81.19% for the sugarcane maturity estimation. The SVM model was trained using the HSV and texture features extracted from sugarcane stalk images using image processing techniques. The prediction of sugar production received a testing R-squared score of 87.75% and mean squared error of 0. Prediction of yield received a mean squared error of approximately 0 and R squared score of 98% on test data. The methodology used in this research could be used by novice farmers to increase their cultivation as well as sugar production.