Plant Disease Detection and Classification using Emperor Penguin Optimizer (EPO) based Region Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN)

Agriculture stands as India’s most crucial industry, despite grappling with a 35% annual loss in crop yield attributed to plant diseases. Traditionally, the detection of plant diseases has been a laborious process, hampered by insufficient laboratory infrastructure and expert knowledge. Plant disease detection methods that are automated provide a useful way to expedite the labor-intensive process of keeping an eye on large-scale agricultural fields and recognizing disease symptoms as soon as they appear on plant leaves. Current developments in deep learning (DL) and computer vision have highlighted the benefits of creating autonomous models for plant disease identification based on visible symptoms on leaves. In this study, we propose a novel method for detecting and classifying plant diseases by combining the Emperor Penguin Optimizer (EPO) with a Region Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN). The suggested methodology uses EPO to improve the discriminative power of features extracted from plant pictures, allowing for a more robust and accurate classification procedure. The Classification Region Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN) is used to leverage spatial correlations within the image, allowing for exact disease region localization. The goal of this integration is to increase the overall efficiency and dependability of plant disease detection systems. The investigations made use of the well-known PlantVillage dataset, which comprises 54,305 data of different plant disease types in 38 categories. Furthermore, an analysis was carried out in comparison with similar advanced investigations. According to the experiment results, RCNN-EPO outperformed in terms of classification accuracy, achieving 94.552%.