Artificial Intelligence Review (2024) 57:167

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-024-10809-z

Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN

approach with mobile app integration for early detection
and classification

Mudassir Iftikhar1 · Irfan Ali Kandhro1 · Neha Kausar1 · Asadullah Kehar3 ·

Mueen Uddin2 · Abdulhalim Dandoush2

Accepted: 16 May 2024 / Published online: 6 June 2024

© The Author(s) 2024

Abstract
Farmers face the formidable challenge of meeting the increasing demands of a rapidly
growing global population for agricultural products, while plant diseases continue to
wreak havoc on food production. Despite substantial investments in disease management,
agriculturists are increasingly turning to advanced technology for more efficient disease
control. This paper addresses this critical issue through an exploration of a deep learning-
based approach to disease detection. Utilizing an optimized Convolutional Neural Network
(E-CNN) architecture, the study concentrates on the early detection of prevalent leaf dis-
eases in Apple, Corn, and Potato crops under various conditions. The research conducts a
thorough performance analysis, emphasizing the impact of hyperparameters on plant dis-
ease detection across these three distinct crops. Multiple machine learning and pre-trained
deep learning models are considered, comparing their performance after fine-tuning their
parameters. Additionally, the study investigates the influence of data augmentation on
detection accuracy. The experimental results underscore the effectiveness of our fine-tuned
enhanced CNN model, achieving an impressive 98.17% accuracy in fungal classes. This
research aims to pave the way for more efficient plant disease management and, ultimately,
to enhance agricultural productivity in the face of mounting global challenges. To improve
accessibility for farmers, the developed model seamlessly integrates with a mobile applica-
tion, offering immediate results upon image upload or capture. In case of a detected dis-
ease, the application provides detailed information on the disease, its causes, and available
treatment options.

Keywords Convolutional neural network · Plant Disease Detection · ANN · Machine

Learning

* Abdulhalim Dandoush
[email protected]
1
Department of CS, Sindh Madressstual Islam University, Karachi, Pakistan
2
CCIT College, University of Doha for Science and Technology UDST, Doha, Qatar
3
Institute of Computer Science, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Pakistan

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 2 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Abbreviations
CNN Convolutional Neural Network
E-CNN Enhanced Convolutional Neural Network
KNN K-Nearest Neighbors
SVM Support Vector Machine
ANN Artificial Neural Network
SVM Support Vector Machine
ML Machine Learning
DL Deep Learning
TF Lite Tensor Flow Lite

1 Introduction

Plant diseases are now a major worldwide issue, causing food shortages in numerous nations.
Identifying these diseases accurately is essential for increasing agricultural yields. Convolu-
tional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become increasingly popular in today’s artificial intel-
ligence era as efficient instruments for accurate disease identification through picture analysis.
As a result, CNNs have become a prevalent choice for the early detection of crop diseases,
leading to improved accuracy (Bangari et al. 2022; Singh et al. 2023; Asif et al. 2020), and
the expansion of technology’s role in precision agriculture. Detecting diseases in maize leaves
typically requires continuous crop monitoring. According to professionals, these methods can
incur high expenses, consume significant time, and exhibit inconsistencies. To address these
challenges, CNNs are employed to automate the detection and classification of maize leaf dis-
eases swiftly and accurately (Camargo and Smith 2009). Numerous researchers have devel-
oped predictive models to determine whether maize leaves will succumb to disease or remain
healthy (Zhang et al. 2021). Figure 1 likely shows a visual representation distinguishing
between plant diseases caused by infections (such as pathogens like bacteria, viruses, fungi,
or pests) and diseases resulting from non-infectious factors (such as nutrient deficiencies, envi-
ronmental stress, or genetic factors).

Fig. 1  Types of Plant Diseases

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 3 of 29 167

Enhancing agricultural systems becomes imperative as the global population is pro-

jected to reach 10 billion in the next 25 years. Leveraging artificial intelligence, particu-
larly Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), can help farmers increase food production,
mitigating the looming threat of food scarcity, a potential leading cause of mortality.
CNNs are excellent at object detection and image classification tasks because they can
automatically extract complicated hierarchical patterns from unprocessed data. There are
many reasons to use the CNN model for detecting plant diseases. CNNs are particularly
good at extracting valuable features from photos of leaves or plant tissues, even in the pres-
ence of differences caused by different lighting conditions, backdrops, and plant species.
This is important for plant disease detection, where identifying subtle visual cues sug-
gestive of diseases is critical. This architecture makes it possible for CNNs to efficiently
capture local patterns and spatial relationships, crucial for identifying disease signs that
might appear in plant leaf or tissue regions. Various elements, including plant growth
stages, weather circumstances, and the presence of weeds or other artifacts, contribute to
the inherent diversity of agricultural landscapes. CNNs exhibit strength to such variations,
enabling them to generalize well across different conditions and effectively detect diseases
in plants regardless of variations in appearance and environmental conditions. While using
CNN models, remember that they are lightweight and fast in image recognition in any
environmental conditions.
There are still many things that could be improved in the previous work. For instance,
K. Sathya (Sathya and Rajalakshmi 2022) proposed their model RDA-CNN, inspired by
CNN architecture, achieving an accuracy of 96.59%. However, they did not test their model
by integrating it into a mobile application. Similarly, Md. Tariqul Islam (Islam 2020)
achieved a 94.29% accuracy with their proposed model, but they also did not create any
system to test their model. Shradha Verma (Verma et al. 2020) presented a CNN model by
tuning hyperparameters, but their results were not sufficiently accurate, and they did not
create a system to test their model either.
One significant development in agriculture is the automated diagnosis of plant dis-
eases using information from plant leaves. Furthermore, crop quality and yield are
positively impacted by the on-time and accurate detection of plant diseases. Because of
the cultivation of a vast array of crop products, even a pathologist or agriculturist may
frequently be unable to recognize plant diseases by observing diseased leaves. Visual
inspection is the predominant method of disease identification in rural parts of develop-
ing countries. Expert monitoring is also necessary constantly. Farmers in isolated places
might have to make a long and costly journey to an expert’s consultation. Agronomists
and farmers benefit from automated computational systems’ high precision and through-
put in identifying and diagnosing plant diseases. The suggested technique enables reli-
able pattern recognition by using CNNs’ capacity to extract intricate details from plant
photos. The proposed model is more optimized and faster and does accurate prediction
and classification with optimized hyperparameters. The Proposed model learns to dif-
ferentiate between illnesses based on optical indicators using a dataset of healthy and
diseased plant samples. Applying machine learning approaches enhances the detection
process’s efficacy and accuracy and is valuable for crop disease identification. The paper
aims to improve precision agriculture by developing a scalable method that will decrease
the effect of diseases of plants on crops. As mentioned in Fig. 2 basic architecture of the
CNN model. In the end, this paper presents a mobile-based system for detecting leaf
disease using (E-CNN); initially, the model was converted into a TF Lite file by integrat-
ing the mobile application. The proposed model can feed images directly from farm-
ers’ mobile devices. The model then classifies plant diseases and detects objects. It then

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 4 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Fig. 2  Architecture of a basic CNN Model

shows the type of ailment, its confidence percentage, and how long it took to classify the
image. We created an Android smartphone app to help farmers with limited resources
take pictures of the sick plant leaves. On the user’s end, the mobile app operates on top
of the CNN paradigm. The application also shows the processed image’s categorization
time and confidence percentage.
This research focuses on exploring fine tuning and hyperparameter optimization on
multiple popular pre-trained CNN based models from literature to address farmers’ disease
detection and classification concerns. Moreover, we implement the best performing model
into a mobile application presenting an easy way to apply the fine-tuned model on different
plants and get details about the disease and possible treatment in friendly manner.
This research centers around optimizing disease detection for farmers through Con-
volutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The study makes four key contributions:

• Evaluation and comparison of popular pre-trained CNNs based models (e.g., AlexNet
(Durmuş et al. 2017), MobileNet (Daphal and Koli 2023; Bi et al. 2022) and ResNet
(Nachtigall 2016) with finely tuned hyperparameters in addition to some machine
learning models like SVM.
• Utilization of advanced machine learning models for efficient plant disease detec-
tion, providing a sophisticated approach to agricultural disease management.
• Refinement of CNN hyperparameters, including activation functions, Epochs, learning
rate, optimizer, and number of layers, through grid search and proper dataset splitting
methods to enhance performance of all the considered models deep learning models.
• Seamless integration into a user-friendly mobile app for efficient disease detection by
capturing and processing real-time images. Detected diseases trigger immediate results
with additional information on details, causes, and treatment options.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents related works. The
formulation of the problem and the fundamental idea underlying the proposed method
are detailed in Sect. 3. Section 4 discusses the experimental results and the different
outcomes. In addition, it presents the Challenges in applying the proposed plant dis-
ease model and its limitations respectively. The work is concluded in Section 5.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 5 of 29 167

2 Related works

Numerous plant diseases and research papers addressing different ailments were previ-
ously examined. Our research concentrated on potato, apple, and corn diseases, specifically
investigating healthy potato leaves, early blight potato leaves, late blight potato leaves, and
diseases of apple leaves and corn. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) were harnessed
as a tool for accurate disease detection. In this context, we explored various hyperparam-
eters such as optimizers, activation functions, and dropout rates, seeking optimal config-
urations that maximize accuracy (Sankaran et al. 2010). It is worth noting that previous
research primarily employed Grid Search for hyperparameter optimization, which is an
exhaustive search method. Our literature review revealed a wealth of research papers dedi-
cated to plant disease detection using various techniques (Barman et al. 2020; Poojary and
Pai 2019; Butale and Kodavade 2019; Saleem et al. 2020). This section of our paper under-
scored the significance of these valuable studies within the context of CNN models.
The subsequent section overviewed different CNN architectures for plant disease diag-
nosis. CNNs, typically adopting the Lenet-5 architecture proposed by Yann LeCun in 1998
(Yi et al. 2018), served as the common architecture. Convolution layers were frequently
employed for feature extraction, followed by pooling techniques like max, min, or aver-
age pooling (Sankaran et al. 2010). The final layer comprised a fully connected layer for
disease classification. This study employed CNN-based deep-learning techniques for
plant disease identification. The procedure usually comprised gathering high-quality pho-
tos of both healthy and diseased leaves for the dataset, which was then divided into train-
ing (80%), validation (10%), and testing (10%) groups. For training, 80% of the dataset is
enough, while when researchers have to do validation and testing, 10% for each is enough.
The use of AlexNet and other deep learning models for predicting leaf illnesses was also
covered in the study, along with a description of a novel model for leaf prediction and iden-
tification (Liu et al. 2018). The NAG Algorithm was used to optimize these models, which
showed remarkable accuracy in recognizing illness traits from pictures.
Additionally, we looked at studies that used optimizers and pre-processing methods
in conjunction with CNNs to identify diseases (Subramanian et al. 2022) accurately. The
study also investigated feature extraction, picture-enhancing techniques, and classification
algorithms such as ANN, SVM, and FUZZY (Pujari et al. 2016). Moreover, researcher
developed Hybrid Convolutional Support Machine (H-CSM) combining SVM, CNN and
CBAM for detecting disease in plant leaf with complexity pattern and inter class similar-
ity (Kaur, et al. 2024). The selection of image datasets has a significant impact on research
outcomes in the field of image analysis currently because image selection is an integral
part of model training. So, though their scale and complexity presented processing hur-
dles, colored images provided a rich visual depiction. Although grayscale images were
less dependent on color, they were less computationally efficient. Although segmented
images needed labor-intensive annotation, they were beneficial for accurate object location
(Sharma et al. 2019). The choice of datasets must be carefully considered by researchers
considering their goals for the study, as model training mainly depends on datasets and the
harmony between the complexity and richness of the data. Table 1 depicts the dataset used,
the ML/DL model, and the detection use cases for recent studies in the field.
In particular, Durmus et al. (Durmuş et al. 2017) used a deep learning method to detect dis-
ease in tomato leaves. This method uses two different deep learning models: (i) AlexNet and
(ii) SqueezeNet. The training was done with the help of ten different apple, potato, and corn

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
 167

13
Table 1  List of previously implemented machine and deep learning techniques
Year Author Datasets Method Research Areas
Page 6 of 29

2016 Barbedo et al. (2016) Own dataset Digital Image Processing Multiple leaves disease
2016 Kaur et al. (2016) Own dataset SVM and Ant Colony Algorithm Multiple leaves disease
2016 Mohanty et al. (2016) PlantVillage AlexNet and GoogLeNet Multiple plant leaves
2016 Nachtigall (2016) PlantVillage AlexNet Apple leaf diseases
2016 Padol and Yadav (2016) Own dataset SVM Grape leaf diseases
2017 Durmuş et al. (2017) PlantVillage AlexNet and SqeezeNet Tomato leaf diseases
2017 DeChant et al. (2017) PlantVillage Layers of CNN architecture Maize leaf diseases
2017 Lu et al. (2017) PlantVillage Multistage CNN Rice leaf diseases
2018 Liu et al. (2018) PlantVillage AlexNet with inception layer Apple leaf diseases
2018 Verma et al. (2018) PlantVillage Multiple techniques Tomato leaves diseases
2019 Adedoja et al. (2019) PlantVillage NASNet Multiple leaves diseases
2019 Ozguven and (Adem 2019) Own dataset Faster R-CNN Beet leaf diseases
2019 Hu et al. (2019) Own dataset Modified Cifer10 Tea Leaf diseases
2020 Li et al. (2020) PlantVillage Shallow CNN with SVM, RF Maize leaf diseases
2020 Chen et al. (2020) PlantVillage INC-VGGN Rice and Maize leaves diseases
2020 Ahmad et al. (2020) PlantVillage VGG16, VGG19, ResNet, InceptionV3 Tomato leaf disease
2021 Atila et al. (2021) PlantVillage EfficientNet Multiple leaves disease
2021 Tuncer (2021) PlantVillage Hybrid CNN Multiple leaves disease
2023 Devi et al. (2023) PlantVillage EfficientNet V2, Inception V3 Cassava and PlantVillage-
mix-up leaves disease
2023 Daphal and Koli (2023) Own dataset MobileNet V2 Sugarcane leaf diseases
M. Iftikhar et al.

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 7 of 29 167

classes, and the accuracy was 95.65% and 94.30% for AlexNet and SqueezeNet, respectively.
In (Liu et al. 2018), the authors applied the detection on Apple leaves using CNN’s pre-trained
AlexNet model. The model is trained to recognize four significant apple leaf diseases, achiev-
ing up to 97.62% accuracy. Another study by DeChant et al. (DeChant et al. 2017) conducted
automatic identification of the Northern leaf blight of Maize leaf through a computation pipe-
line of CNN that shows the challenging part of the limited data. The system got accuracy up
to 96.7%. Furthermore, AlexNet and GoogLeNet architectures for deep learning were used by
Mohanty et al. (Mohanty et al. 2016) to produce models for categorizing tomato leaf diseases.
By combining learning methods and different training and testing splits, their system got an
accuracy of 99.35% using the PlantVillage (PlantVillage Dataset 2023) dataset.
Ahmed et al. (Ahmad et al. 2020) used four different Pre-trained CNN networks, VGG-16,
ResNet50, Inception V3, and VGG-19, for identification and classification of tomato leaf dis-
ease, where the model got 93% accuracy. The next study was by Rumpf et al. in 2010, when
he discussed the differences between healthy and unhealthy leaves of sugar beet,he trained his
model in such a way that without disease particular symptoms visibility on leaves, the model
identified the disease by using SVM and their model got the accuracy of 97%.
The detection of soybean diseases was a challenging task due to variations in natural scene
backgrounds. To deal with this, researchers have developed an approach utilizing Choquet fuzzy
ensemble strategy with CNN for the detection and classification of soybean diseases with high
accuracy and precision (Hang et al. 2024; Mishra et al. 2022). Enhanced corn seed disease clas-
sification and detection, using feature augmentation and transfer learning, include data augmen-
tation such as rotation, flipping, and scaling are investigated to enhance the robustness of CNN
model in detecting skin cancer lesion (Rai and Roop 2024; Patel and Atul 2024). Moreover, to
detect leaf illness, this study contrasts a newly created custom CNN with nine pre-trained mod-
els. With its efficiency increasing in training speed and memory needs, the custom CNN presents
a strong substitute for agricultural leaf disease early detection (Alam et al. 2024).
In (Nachtigall 2016), Nachtigall et al. used CNN in the detection and grouping of leaf disease
also, nutritional deficiencies, and herbicide damage on apple leaves. Their system got an accu-
racy of 97.3%, and the dataset was up to 2539 images. Recently, Swapnil Dadabhau Daphal et al.
(Daphal and Koli 2023) collected their dataset of up to 2569 images with five categories. The
author used the well-known deep learning technique MobileNet-V2, proposing the system for
better generalization, and the system got an accuracy of 84%. The primary contribution of this
study lies in the comprehensive analysis of hyperparameters in the context of plant disease detec-
tion, emphasizing three specific classes while demonstrating the effectiveness of the fine-tuned
model. This research study provides valuable insights by evaluating the different CNN-based net-
works used in the field, offering a foundation for future research in plant disease detection.

3 Methodology

In this section, the architecture of the CNN model and our proposed model, E-CNN,
for detecting and classifying plant diseases is elucidated comprehensively.

3.1 The architecture of CNN

The basic architecture of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is depicted in Fig. 2,

representing a fundamental framework in deep learning, particularly for image processing

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 8 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

tasks. CNNs are designed to analyze images by assigning adjustable biases and weights to
various elements, allowing them to discern different visual aspects. The initial phase of a
CNN involves manual filter creation during training, gradually refining them to recognize
diverse features within the training data.
The structural blueprint of CNNs closely emulates the neural connectivity patterns
observed in the human brain, specifically drawing inspiration from the organization of the
Visual Cortex. In this biological analogy, individual neurons respond to specific stimuli
within a confined visual field, termed the receptive field. These receptive fields overlap,
collectively analyzing the entire visual area. Similarly, CNNs adopt this concept to ensure a
comprehensive interpretation of the visual input, enhancing their ability to recognize intri-
cate patterns (Ahmad et al. 2020; Nachtigall 2016; Mishra et al. 2022). This biologically
inspired approach contributes to the network’s efficiency in image processing and feature
extraction tasks.

3.2 Enhanced (E‑CNN) model for plant disease detection and classification

Figure 3 visually represents the entire workflow of our enhanced E-CNN Disease Detec-
tion Model. It offers a comprehensive overview of the model’s functionality and the dis-
tinct stages it undergoes for efficient disease detection. In the next subsections, we delve
into a detailed breakdown of the components and experimentation settings.
While Fig. 2 illustrates the structure of the basic CNN, Fig. 4 illustrates the E-CNN
model’s design that is used by the general Algorithm reported in Algorithm I to classify
the output based on a given input image.

Algorithm 1  General Algorithm of the Proposed E-CNN Model

Input: image from dataset D

Output: the disease-recognized label
1: Initialize the enhanced CNN parameters.
2: Data augmentation and preprocessing on the input image
3: For each di Eshuffle (D) do
4: Extract complicated features with the enhanced CNN
5: Input all extracted features into a global average pooling layer
6: Classify an image in the Dense + Softmax layer
7: end for

In fact, CNNs, inspired by the human visual system, are extensively used in image
processing and analysis (Shrestha et al. 2020). Their strength lies in classifying unpro-
cessed input data by autonomously determining the most appropriate filters for this task.
This inherent ability of CNNs to extract and recognize features reduces the computational
demands typically encountered in other machine-learning methods for these functions
(Chauhan et al. 2018). Key elements of a CNN include convolutional, pooling, and fully
connected layers, as outlined in summary Table 2.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 9 of 29 167

Fig. 3  Illustration of Proposed Framework

In contrast, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) usually have three distinct layers: Input,
Hidden, and Output. Specific bias values and weights characterize neurons in the Hidden
layer. These are multiplied with input values and passed through an activation function.
If the output value surpasses a certain threshold, it gets forwarded to the next layer in the
network; if not, no data is transmitted. ANNs function feed-forwardly, meaning data moves
in sequence through the layers. The main goal in adjusting the model is to lower the cost
function for each input. The primary objective during model adjustment is minimizing each
input’s cost function. CNNs represent a neural network with one or more layers designed
to extract dependencies from inputs, such as text and images. A key feature of CNNs is the
convolution operation performed across multiple intermediate layers. Convolution involves
the dot-product of input bundles with a grid structure and a set of weights.
CNNs are particularly popular in image processing and recognition. CNN architectures
have seen significant advances, with LeNet-5 1998 being a notable milestone. Earlier com-
puter vision techniques relied on feature identification, demanding substantial expertise
in image processing. However, CNNs have transformed image processing by automating
feature extraction. They are compatible with matrices, RGB color images, and even ten-
sors, enabling image classification, segmentation, face detection, and object identification.
CNNs have found successful applications in diverse fields, including healthcare, web ser-
vices, mail, and natural language processing. A CNN comprises stacked layers, including
convolution, pooling, ReLU activation, and fully connected layers, as mentioned in Fig. 4.
These layers process each input image through filtering, correction, and reduction stages
before being transformed into a vector. The convolution layer is instrumental in teaching
CNNs to recognize specific features, such as object detection. Multiple convolution layers
can be employed for added efficiency. The pooling layer further enhances efficiency by
down-sampling, significantly reducing computational demands.
A CNN architecture using the Keras Sequential model was designed for image classifi-
cation. The initial operation, assumed to be rescaling, adjusts pixel values from the typical
0–255 range to a normalized scale of 0–1. The network then sequentially applies Conv2D
layers with 32, 64, and 64 filters to detect increasingly complex features in the input
images. After each Conv2D layer, MaxPooling2D is employed for spatial down sampling,
reducing the spatial dimensions of the feature maps. Dropout layers with a dropout rate of
0.1 (deactivating 10% of neurons) are strategically inserted after each MaxPooling2D layer
for regularization to prevent overfitting.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 10 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Fig. 4  Architecture of E-CNN Model

Table 2  The configuration of E-CNN architecture

Layer Type Input Shape Output Shape Kernal Stride

1 Conv2D (32, 254, 254, 32) (32, 254, 254, 32) (3,3) (1,1)
2 MaxPooling2D (32, 127, 254, 32) (32, 127, 254, 32) (2,2) -
3 Conv2D (32, 125, 125, 64) (32, 125, 125, 64) (3,3) (1,1)
4 MaxPooling2D (32, 62, 62, 64) (32, 62, 62, 64) (2,2) -
5 Conv2D (32, 60, 60, 64) (32, 60, 60, 64) (3,3) (1,1)
6 MaxPooling2D (32, 30, 30, 64) (32, 30, 30, 64) (2,2) -
7 Conv2D (32, 28, 28, 64) (32, 28, 28, 64) (3,3) (1,1)
8 MaxPooling2D (32, 14, 14, 64) (32, 14, 14, 64) (2,2) -
9 Conv2D (32, 12, 12, 64) (32, 12, 12, 64) (3,3) (1,1)
10 MaxPooling2D (32, 6, 6, 64) (32, 6, 6, 64) (2,2) -
11 Conv2D (32, 4, 4, 64) (32, 4, 4, 64) (3,3) (1,1)
12 MaxPooling2D (32, 2, 2, 64) (32, 2, 2, 64) (2,2) -
13 Flatten (32, 256) 1D tensor - -
14 Dense (32, 64) (64) - -
15 Dense (32, 3) (10) - -

This convolution, pooling, and dropout process is repeated for several layers, progres-
sively extracting detailed hierarchical features from the input images. The final part of the
network involves flattening the 2D feature maps into a 1D vector, followed by a densely
connected layer with 64 units and ReLu activation. Another dropout layer is applied before
the output layer, which consists of 10 units, representing the number of classes in the clas-
sification task, and utilizes softmax activation for multi-class classification. The architec-
ture is capped off with a final dropout layer before the output, enhancing model gener-
alization. This CNN structure is well-suited for discerning intricate patterns in image data,
contributing to accurate classification into one of the specified classes.
Overall, through systematic hyperparameter tuning, the CNN model was optimized to
achieve superior performance in disease detection across a range of crops, thereby contrib-
uting to more effective plant disease management in agriculture. Initially, a set of hyper-
parameters was chosen, including learning rate, batch size, number of layers, filter size,
dropout rate, and activation functions. These parameters significantly affect the learning
process and the model’s ability to extract meaningful features from the input images.
Table 3 shows several vital hyperparameters that are set up to affect the learning process
during the training phase of a machine learning model. Training is done for this model
throughout 100 epochs, where an epoch is one complete iteration over the dataset. The

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 11 of 29 167

Table 3  Hyperparameters Hyperparameters Description

Learning Rate 0.001

Batch Size 32
Epochs 100
Dropouts 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4
Optimizers Adagrad, Adam, Adamax, Nadam
Activation Function softmax, softplus, sigmoid, relu

model’s weights are updated using the ADAMAX optimizer, and the loss function selec-
tion is set to sparse categorical cross-entropy, which denotes a situation in which the target
variable is categorical, and the classes are incompatible. To maximize computing effec-
tiveness and memory utilization, the training data is handled in batches of 32 samples at a
time. The dataset’s images are standardized to 256 pixels, with three channels signifying
the representation of RGB color.

3.3 Image processing and augmentation

In Fig. 5, we show three types of samples used for training and testing. Furthermore, as
shown in.
Figure 6, Data augmentation was employed during training, encompassing positional
techniques like scaling, cropping, flipping, and rotation. Additionally, brightness, con-
trast, and saturation adjustments were applied to enhance color quality (Enkvetchakul and
Surinta 2022), (Nagaraju et al. 2022). Data augmentation also featured random rotations
and distortions, along with horizontal flips. This process generated eight enhanced images
for each original image. All original and enhanced images were initially normalized by
dividing each pixel’s value by 255.
Furthermore, the images were resized to match the input requirements of various model
architectures. Due to hardware constraints, the input size for all EfficientNet architecture

Fig. 5  Types of Samples for training and testing

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 12 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Fig. 6  Data Augmentation

models was set at 132 × 132, ensuring uniform comparisons among models as done in (Al-
Shemarry et al. 2019). Table 4 and Fig. 7 report information about different plant disease
types.

3.4 Feature extraction and selection

Feature Extraction: First, basic properties like statistical characteristics of colors (like
RGB, HSV, and CIELab, min, max, mean, standard deviation, bias, and kurtosis) will be
extracted. Textural and morphological elements like Haralick or Local Binary Patterns
can be extracted if necessary (Kaur et al. 2022).

3.4.1 Feature selection

The research study can determine the salient characteristics of all diseases and the salient
characteristics of nutritious vegetables with feature selection. This model employed filter

Table 4  Diseases classification

Plant Name Disease Name Scientific Name Type of Disease No. of Images

Potato - - - 152
Potato Late Blight Phytophthora infestans (Mon- Fungal 1000
tagne)
Potato Early Blight Alternaria solani Fungal 1000
Apple Apple Scab Venturia Inaequalis Fungal 630
Apple Black Rot Botryosphaeria Obtusa Fungal 621
Apple Cedar Apple Rust Gymnosporangium juniperi- 275
virginianae Schwein
Apple - - - 1645
Corn (Maize) - - - 1162
Corn (Maize) Northern Leaf Blight Exserohilum turcicum Pleospo- fungal meningitis 985
rales
Corn (Maize) Cercospora Leaf Cercospora zeae-maydis fungal pathogen 513
Spot Gray_leaf_
spot

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 13 of 29 167

Fig. 7  Classes distribution

techniques like Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC), Variance, ANOVA and Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) to find hidden patterns in the data.

3.4.2 Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC)

PCC is a statistical method used to measure the linear correlation between two variables x
and y. The range for this variable is between + 1 to -1; Positive 1 refers to a positive asso-
ciation between variables, and negative 1 means a negative association between variables.

3.4.3 Variance

Variance measures how sensitive the model is to variation in the training set. It is a met-
ric for how much the model’s predictions change depending on the subsets of the training
set it is trained on. Moreover, it can be defined as how much the predicted values are
away from each other. A high variance model runs the risk of being overfitting because
it is excessively complicated and captures both the random noise and the deeper trends
in the data. Because the model has remembered the training data instead of generalizing,
overfitting happens if a model performs outstandingly on overtrained data but badly on
unknown data.

3.4.4 ANOVA

ANOVA refers to the Analysis of Variance. It is used to show the difference between two
or more than two means. It generally identifies which features are most important in pre-
dicting outputs. It is an essential feature of feature selection.

3.4.5 Principal component analysis (PCA)

PCA is used to overcome overfitting errors in the model through different views; it is a sta-
tistical procedure that uses orthogonal alteration that fluctuates a set of correlated variables
to set uncorrelated variables.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 14 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Statistical Analysis is a pivotal scientific instrument, facilitating the examination and

collection of extensive datasets. Its primary purpose is to discern prevalent patterns and
trends within large data volumes, converting them into insightful and valuable information.
This model uses only one method of variance analysis (ANOVA). This assists t-student
test with the most crucial feature to determine the statistical difference between diseased
and healthy leaves.

3.5 Mobile app integration

The combination of TensorFlow Lite (TFLite), Firebase, Flutter, and Dart, presents
a comprehensive and robust stack for developing machine learning-powered mobile
applications (How to Build Mobile Apps with Flutter 2023). TFLite facilitates the
deployment of machine learning models on mobile and embedded devices, ensuring
efficient and optimized inference. Firebase integration adds a robust backend to the
application, offering features like real-time database, authentication, and cloud func-
tions, enhancing the app’s functionality and scalability. Flutter, a UI toolkit developed
by Google and Dart as its programming language, provides a cross-platsform frame-
work for building aesthetically pleasing and high-performance mobile applications.
Including Dart for background, processing ensures smooth and responsive app behav-
ior even when running tasks in the background. Diagrams, presumably used for system
architecture or workflow visualization, contribute to the clarity and understanding of
the overall application structure. Figure 8 represents the users’ interaction with our
mobile application, which integrates our proposed E-CNN model.
There are two options: one is to instantly capture an image of the leaf, and the second is
to upload a captured image from the gallery. After uploading or capturing, the image will
pass through our proposed E-CNN model, and the user can see the result label on their

Fig. 8  User interaction with

android app

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 15 of 29 167

screen. Users can also see the details, causes, and treatment of that observed disease. In
our experiment, Redmi 13C mobile was used to test this E-CNN-based Mobile App. After
testing, it was observed that our application took 25 s on average to detect disease from
the image; almost 15 s were required to upload or capture the image, while only 10 s on
average were required to process the E-CNN model and show the result. The whole testing
used a 4G network. Test results are shown in Fig. 16.

4 Results and discussion

4.1 Implementation of the model

This section outlines the implementation and evaluation of the proposed method,
E-CNN, utilizing the Scikit-Learn library and Keras, a high-level API based on Ten-
sorFlow Lite, within the Python programming language. The research study employed
Jupyter Notebook, an interactive web-based machine learning training and testing plat-
form. The dataset utilized in this experiment was obtained from Kaggle, provided by
PlantVillage (PlantVillage Dataset 2023), comprising 54,000 images of various plants.
For model training, 10% of the dataset was allocated for validation, 10% for testing,
and 80% for training. The training process utilized a batch size of 32 and 100 epochs.
Additionally, hyperparameters such as the learning rate were set to 0.0001. Dur-
ing training, the performance of different optimizers, including ADAM, ADAMAX,
ADAGRAD, and NADAM, were compared, with ADAMAX selected as the optimizer
due to its superior accuracy.

4.2 Dataset

To evaluate the proposed E-CNN model, the dataset used in our experiments is publicly
available on the Kaggle site named Plant Village (PlantVillage Dataset 2023), which
contained 54,000 images of healthy and infected leaves of various crops. After applying
the feature selection techniques explained in Sect. 3.4, Table 5 maps the extracted feature
meaning to its real name in the dataset file. As an example, the feature mean_c1_rgb
represents the mean of red color in the image. The proposed research study centered on
the potato, apple, and corn dataset, consisting of 9175 images divided into the train, test,
and validation sets. The potato dataset encompassed three distinct classes: healthy, early
blight disease, and late blight disease. Apple and corn are also divided into their respec-
tive diseases.

4.3 Evaluation metrics

It has been noted that the PlantVillage dataset was used in most of the research. As a result,
the classifications’ nature and outcome are extremely similar. Additionally, some research-
ers have classified bean crop diseases using deep learning algorithms. To prevent findings
from repeating, the dataset of leaf disease was used with the help of three deep learning
models that utilize different optimization techniques. After the DL model and optimization
technique were shown to be the most efficient duo, the collection of photos of bean leaves
underwent a varied class illnesses classification. We collected images of diseased leaves
from the PlantVillage dataset to distinguish diseases.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 16 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Table 5  Features extraction

Feature Name Real Feature Obtained Feature Values

mean_c1_rgb mean of red 1.3442651765346868e-300

mean_c2_rgb mean of green 0.0
mean_c3_rgb mean of blue 8.939919952500531e-225
std_c1_rgb the standard deviation of red 4.6115436039578915e-125
std_c2_rgb The standard deviation of green 2.3159068791968023e-123
std_c3_rgb the standard deviation of the blue 8.677760022335703e-144
min_c1_rgb minimum of red 1.0800379855618637e-225
min_c2_rgb minimum of green 4.15e-322
min_c3_rgb minimum of blue 3.184826853782704e-206
max_c1_rgb maximum of red 7.204390205067731e-220
max_c2_rgb maximum of green 3.3134991119925323e-249
max_c3_rgb maximum of blue 1.5844288235712915e-207
mean_c1_lab mean of L 4.5420900929257516e-237
mean_c2_lab mean of a* 0.0
mean_c3_lab mean of b* 0.0
std_c1_lab standard L 5.242290141124147e-140
std_c2_lab standard a* 0.0
std_c3_lab standard b* 3.990956620006536e-282
min_c1_lab minimum of L 7.469894518070457e-301
min_c2_lab minimum of a* 1.3269063332187237e-213
min_c3_lab minimum of b* 0.0
max_c1_lab maximum of L 1.7317817297094814e-231
max_c2_lab maximum of a* 0.0
max_c3_lab maximum of b* 7.871720232890082e-238

TP + TN
Accuracy = (1)
TP + FN + FP + TN

TP
Sensitivity or Recall (R) = (2)
TP + FN

TN
Specifity = (3)
FP + TN

TP
Precision(P) = (4)
TP + FP

2×P×R
F − measure = (5)
P+R

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 17 of 29 167

(6)
√
G − Mean = Sensitivity × Specificity

where ­TN and T ­ P are the number of accurate guesses made when the actual class is False
or True, respectively. Additionally, the numbers ­FN and ­FP indicate how many wrong pre-
dictions there were when the actual class was True or false accordingly. These metrics are
combined to create a graphic known as the receiver’s operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
This curve illustrates the trade-off between a model’s classification mistakes and ­FN and ­FP
rates. Furthermore, the AUC graph can be generated using the ROC curve. Specifically, the
level of separability is represented by AUC, which ROC leads to a probability curve. AUC
indicates a model’s capacity to perform well in a classification test.
High separability metrics indicate a superior model with an AUC close to one. Con-
versely, an inferior separability measure is indicated by an AUC close to zero. If sensitivity
and 1-specificity correspond with the probability of T ­ P and F
­ P, respectively, the following
estimates the AUC. Table 6 shows the confusion matrix that provides a comprehensive
view of a model’s performance, allowing for the calculation of the various metrics defined
above.
∑ {[ ] 1[ ]}
AUC = i Sensitivity.Δ(1 − Specificity) + ΔSensitivity.Δ(1 − Specificity)
2
(7)
In which
Δ(1 − Specificity) = (1 − Specificity)i − (1 − Specificity)i − 1 (8)
And
ΔSensitivity = Sensitivity i − Sensitivity i − 1 (9)
where i is used as index.

4.4 Performance analysis

In this section, we initially apply classical machine learning methods, Logistic Regres-
sion (LR) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), before delving into various Deep
Learning approaches, including CNN-based models, and concluding with the results of
our Enhanced CNN (E-CNN).

4.4.1 Performance with LR

Logistic Regression is a statistical method used for binary classification, predicting the
probability of an instance belonging to a specific class. On the other hand, SVM seeks
to find a hyperplane that maximizes the margin between classes, making it versatile for

Table 6  Confusion matrix Confusion matrix Predicted class

representation
Positive Negative

Actual class Positive TP FN

Negative FP TN

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 18 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

complex decision boundaries in high-dimensional spaces. Logistic Regression, while

simpler and interpretable, is more suitable for linearly separable scenarios. Our prob-
lem, being more intricate, demonstrates better performance with SVM, as opposed to
Logistic Regression, which yields suboptimal results (82% accuracy) due to its linear
nature, as reported in Table 7. We employ k-fold cross-validation with an initial value
of 10 for this classification.

4.4.2 Comparisons of CNN based pre‑trained models

In this subsection, Table 8 reports the main configuration and accuracy results of five
popular pre-trained models, out of the listed works in Table 1, on detecting the Fun-
gal disease using the same dataset we have used and explained earlier. An important
observation from Table 8 is that the number of parameters versus the number of layers
are playing an important role in the measuring the performance. For instance, the high-
est accuracy was realized by ResNet50 that has 50 layers and 23 million parameters.
DensNet121 has the highest number of layer but a smaller number of parameters.
Figures 9 and 10 illustrate the progression of accuracy and loss functions for five pop-
ular models that we have fine-tuned, show consistent improvement with respect to their
original performance (as pre-trained models with given parameters values). Also, the fig-
ures show the evaluation with an increasing number of training and validation epochs. Fig-
ure 11 details the evaluation of our E-CNN model that outperformed all the considered
models even after the fine-tuning phase.
In particular, we observe from Fig. 9 that pre-trained DenseNet 121 model that we
have enhanced by fine-tuning its hyperparameters has achieved an accuracy of 92.20%.
It is worth noting that despite its increased accuracy, the parameter count has been
reduced from 4.24 million in the original study to a 3.47 million. In the same direction,
the pre-trained VGG-16 model demonstrated an impressive 91% accuracy while utiliz-
ing 23 layers with 138 parameters as shown in Fig. 10 (the bottom part) and reported
in Table 8. The VGG-16 model after our fine tuning outperformed the original study
(Subramanian et al. 2022; Ahmad et al. 2020) in terms of accuracy. Moving on to mid-
dle part of Fig. 10, the fine-tuned model based on the pre-trained AlexNet (Soujanya

Table 7  Logistic regression on Precision Recall F1-Score Support

extracted features
Apple Black Rot 0.88 0.88 0.88 200
Apple Cedar Rust 0.85 0.85 0.85 200
Apple Healthy 0.90 0.91 0.90 200
Apple Scab 0.85 0.82 0.84 200
Corn Cercosporin Leaf 0.64 0.67 0.65 200
Corn Healthy 1.00 0.99 0.99 200
Corn Northern Leaf 0.65 0.61 0.63 200
Potato Early 0.93 0.97 0.95 200
Potato Healthy 0.76 0.75 0.76 152
Potato Late Blight 0.74 0.78 0.76 200
Accuracy 0.82 0.82 0.82 0.82
Macro avg 0.82 0.82 0.82 1952
Weighted avg 0.82 0.82 0.82 1952

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 19 of 29 167

Table 8  Result comparisons of pre-trained models on plant disease detection

Pre-Trained Models No. of Layers Parameter Size Accuracy Disease Types Dataset
(million)

ResNet50 50 23 98 MB 98% Fungal 10 Classes

(PlantVillage)
DenseNet 121 121 8.06 33 MB 94.20% Fungal 10 Classes
(PlantVillage)
AlexNet 8 60 240 MB 87.56% Fungal 10 Classes
(PlantVillage)
VGG16 23 138 528 MB 91% Fungal 10 Classes
(PlantVillage)
MobileNet V2 88 3.37 14 MB 95.69% Fungal 10 Classes
(PlantVillage)

and Jabez 2021; Arya and Singh 2019) achieved an accuracy of 87.56% with just eight
(8) layers and a minimal parameter count of 60. Thus, the optimized AlexNet model we
considered showed superior accuracy compared to the referenced study. Moreover, as
shown in Fig. 10 the upper part, our pre-trained ResNet50 model exhibited remarkable

Fig. 9  Training and validation of MobileNet and DenseNet

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 20 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Fig. 10  Training and Validation of ResNet 50, AlexNet and VGG16

accuracy, reaching an impressive 98%, while boasting a substantial 50-layer depth with
a parameter count of only 23.
With respect to the number of Epoch impact on these considered models, we
observe from Figs. 9 and 10 that by the 10th epoch, the five CNN-based models
achieved an accuracy of approximately 70–78% on the potato dataset (see Figs. 9

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 21 of 29 167

Fig. 11  Loss and accuracy of proposed E-CNN model

and 10). Contrastingly, our E-CNN model (refer to Fig. 11) demonstrated a signifi-
cantly higher accuracy of around 88% at the same epoch. Even after the 100th epoch,
the models found in the literature reached an accuracy range of 93–96%, while our
E-CNN model surpassed them with an accuracy of 98.17%.
Figure 12 presents the classification results for different machine and deep learning
models on the dataset. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) and ResNet50 achieved an
accuracy of 96% and 97.8% respectively. However, our E-CNN model achieved an accu-
racy of 98.2% outperforming all the other models.
In Table 9 we summarize the comparison of the pre-trained models (after fine-tuning
and improvement) for plant disease detection using various metrics such as the number
of layers, parameter count, dataset size, accuracy, and the types of diseases considered.
The highest accuracy recorded among these studies is 98.17%, achieved by the proposed
system for Potato disease detection using a CNN approach on the PlantVillage dataset.

Fig. 12  Accuracy comparison between E-CNN and the other models

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 22 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Table 9  Baseline and target performance levels

Reference Crop Approach Accuracy Dataset

Padol et al. (2016) Grape SVM 88.89% 137 captured images

Fuentes et al. (2017) Tomato Faster R-CNN 83% (Testing acc) Own
Hlaing et al. (2017) Cotton SVM 84.7% 3474 images from
PlantVillage
Hlaing et al. (2018) Tomato SVM 85.1% 3535 images from
PlantVillage
Atole et al. (2018) Rice AlexNet 91.23% 850 + images
Ramcharan et al. (2019) Cassava MobileNet 80.6% 2000 + images
Ahmad et al. (2020) Tomato ResNet 85% 300 + images
Bi et al. Apple MobileNet 73.50% 300 + captured images
(2022)
Proposed E-CNN Model Multiple Plants CNN 98.17% PlantVillage

4.4.3 Impact of hyperparameters on E‑CNN performance

In this subsection we focus on the selected enhanced E-CNN model that outperforms
all the other fine-tuned models. We systematically evaluated the influence of various
hyperparameters on the performance of the E-CNN model for disease detection across
multiple crops. The study encompassed four prominent activation functions (Softmax,
Softplus, ReLU, and Sigmoid), along with key parameters like the optimizer, learning
rate, batch size, and layer count. The study also evaluates the model’s response to an
escalating number of epochs. Initial parameterization included the selection of learning
rates, batch sizes, layer counts, filter sizes, dropout rates, and activation functions, all
crucial factors affecting the learning process and feature extraction capabilities.
Figure 13 depicts the evolution of validation accuracy concerning the Epoch num-
ber across different activation functions applied to the E-CNN model. Notably, for a
small number of epochs, the Softmax function outperforms the others. However, as
the number of epochs increases substantially, all functions demonstrate similar perfor-
mance, except for Sigmoid, which lags behind in effectiveness even with an extended
training duration.
The E-CNN model exhibited promising performance in identifying fungal dis-
eases across various classes, excelling in prevalent diseases like Potato Late Blight
and Potato Early Blight. Challenges emerged in recognizing fewer common diseases,
resulting in diminished precision and recall for those classes. Fine-tuning hyperparam-
eters, including optimizers, dropouts, and activation functions, revealed unique behav-
iors, such as challenges faced by the Adagrad optimizer and the Sigmoid activation
function. Table 10 reports a detailed analysis that highlights the profound impact of
these hyperparameters on model performance. Notably, the highest accuracy observed
is 88%, achieved with the "0.1" dropout rate using the Adagrad optimizer. Conversely,
the lowest accuracy, 1%, was obtained with the Sigmoid activation function. Figure 14
reports the confusion matrix for the detection of diseases for the three apple, corns and
potato plants.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 23 of 29 167

Fig. 13  The model is accurate on 100 epochs with different activation functions

This comparison serves as a reference point to evaluate the performance of the pro-
posed system and its significance in crop disease detection.
Last, Fig. 15 shows the other performance metrics of our proposed improved E-CNN
model with the best hyperparameters setup, which has Epoch 100, Optimizer ’Adamax,’
Activation Function ’Softmax,’ and Dropout ‘0.1’. In our experiment, Redmi 13C
mobile was used to test this E-CNN-based Mobile App as shown in Fig. 16.

Table 10  Result of Class Hyper Precision Recall F1-Score

hyperparameters
Optimizer Adagrad 19% 28% 20%
Adam 86% 79% 79%
Adamax 88% 80% 80%
Nadam 43% 49% 42%
Activation Softmax 86% 85% 85%
Softplus 86% 83% 83%
Sigmoid 1% 10% 2%
ReLu 85% 83% 83%
Dropout Rate 0.1 88% 87% 87%
0.2 86% 86% 86%
0.3 86% 84% 84%
0.4 82% 79% 79%

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 24 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Fig. 14  Confusion matrix results

4.5 Challenges and limitations

There are many challenges and issues involved in disease symptom analysis and
developing a CNN model. The issues related to the automatic identification and
classification of plant diseases with images is discussed in this section. The chal-
lenges conventional plant disease diagnosis systems face are discussed in (Liu et al.
2018). Agricultural environments are subject to various environmental factors, such
as lighting conditions, weather fluctuations, and soil composition, which can affect
the appearance of plant diseases. Adapting CNN models for environmental variabil-
ity ensures their effectiveness in real-world settings. This can involve collecting data
under diverse environmental conditions, augmenting datasets with synthetic varia-
tions, and incorporating domain adaptation techniques into the model training pipe-
line. Deploying CNN (Khalid and Karan 2023; Nagaraju et al. 2022; Mishra et al.
2022) models in resource-constrained agricultural settings, such as remote farms or
developing regions, poses computational resources, power availability, and internet
connectivity challenges. To overcome these challenges, researchers develop light-
weight CNN architectures optimized for edge devices, implement efficient model
inference algorithms, and explore offline processing and data compression techniques
to reduce computational overhead.
Also, there are many reasons for developing plant diseases, such as fungi, viruses,
and bacteria. Anyone can affect each crop; that is why there would be different classes
of crops. Detecting these classes and having specialized knowledge about the disease
spectrum for each crop is a must. Diseases within the same class may exhibit dispa-
rate indicators across different crops. For example, early blight has small patches on

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 25 of 29 167

Fig. 15  Classification report matrix of our proposed improved E-CNN model, which has Epoch 100, Opti-
mizer ’Adamax,’ Activation Function ’Softmax,’ and Dropout ’0.1’

Fig. 16  Integration of TF model in Flutter mobile application

potato leaves; the same is true for tomato leaves. The only difference is the shape
of the leaf, which is the same as apple leaves. Powdery mildew disease resembles
white powdery patches, while circular lesions with white powdery patches on Potato
leaves. Accurately identifying these symptom variations is essential for effective dis-
ease detection.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 26 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

4.6 Limitations of the proposed model.

The proposed E-CNN model faces obstacles and issues in the training and developing
intelligent plant disease detection and classification. As any CNN model, the sug-
gested agricultural system is subject to an array of environmental variables, including
variations in lighting, weather patterns, and soil composition, all of which influence
the appearance of plant diseases. While the proposed model exhibits resilience to cer-
tain levels of variability, its ability to generalize effectively across vastly diverse envi-
ronmental conditions, which is not effectively represented in the training data, may
be compromised CNN, especially those using large architectures or needing exten-
sive training data. It should fulfill good hardware specifications and computational
requirements. Training models in resource-limited environments, such as low-specifi-
cation devices or field-based systems, can create hurdles. Addressing these challenges
offers detailed features that show the suitability of the proposed CNN-based approach
for plant disease detection. Additionally, future research initiatives should be aimed at
modifying these constraints and obstacles to advance agricultural disease detection.

5 Conclusion

This paper introduces a novel approach for plant disease detection and classification, lever-
aging an optimized Convolutional Neural Network (E-CNN) architecture. The study focuses
on addressing the pressing challenge faced by farmers in meeting the demands of a rapidly
growing global population for agricultural products, amidst the persistent threat of plant dis-
eases. By concentrating on the early detection of prevalent leaf diseases in Apple, Corn,
and Potato crops, our research contributes to more efficient disease control and enhanced
agricultural productivity. The core CNN structure underwent significant modifications,
including the addition of extra network layers, incorporation of a Global Average Pooling
(GAP) layer, and integration of a Batch Normalization (BN) layer. Through these structural
adjustments, the proposed E-CNN model achieved superior classification accuracy com-
pared to contemporary image classification techniques while reducing the number of param-
eters. Moreover, the research investigates the influence of data augmentation on detection
accuracy, contributing to the reduction of potential overfitting and improving generaliza-
tion capabilities. To enhance accessibility for farmers, the developed model seamlessly inte-
grates with a mobile application, providing immediate results upon image upload or capture.
In case of a detected disease, the application offers detailed information on the disease, its
causes, and available treatment options. The experimental results and integration with prac-
tical applications underscore the efficacy of our approach in addressing the critical issue of
plant disease management. In particular, multiple machine learning and pre-trained deep
learning models were considered and fine-tuned, highlighting the effectiveness of our fine-
tuned enhanced CNN model with an impressive 98.17% accuracy in fungal classes. The
study includes a thorough performance analysis of several models, emphasizing the impact
of hyperparameters on plant disease detection across these three distinct crops.

Author contributions I.A.K, M.U and A.D defined the methodology of the work. N.K and A.K enriched
the discussion arround the pre-trained DL models and who to fine tune models. M.I developed the mobile
application, trained the models and collected the results. M.I and I.A.K produced the figures, M.U and A.D
prepared the structure of the tables. All the authors participated in reading and overviewing the state of art

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 27 of 29 167

and fill accordingly the tables. All the authors contributed in writing some sections and reviewing the sec-
tions of the others and discuss the results with respect to the related works.

Funding Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Data availability No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations
Ethical approval This paper does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by
any authors.

Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study.

Human and animal rights This paper contains no studies with human participants or animals performed by
authors.

Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.

Conflict of interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

References
Adedoja A, Owolawi PA, Mapayi T (2019) Deep learning based on nasnet for plant disease recognition
using leave images. In: 2019 international conference on advances in big data, computing and data
communication systems (icABCD). IEEE, pp 1–5
Ahmad I, Hamid M, Yousaf S, Shah ST, Ahmad MO (2020) Optimizing pretrained convolutional neural
networks for tomato leaf disease detection. Complexity 2020:1–6
Alam TS, Chandni BJ, Abhijit P (2024) Comparing pre-trained models for efficient leaf disease detec-
tion: a study on custom CNN. J Electr Syst Inf Technol 111:12
Al-Shemarry MS, Li Y, Abdulla S (2019) An efficient texture descriptor for the detection of license
plates from vehicle images in difficult conditions. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 21(2):553–564
Arya S, Singh R (2019) A comparative study of cnn and alexnet for detection of disease in potato and
mango leaf. In: 2019 International conference on issues and challenges in intelligent computing
techniques (ICICT). IEEE, vol 1, pp 1–6
Asif MKR, Rahman MA, Hena MH (2020) CNN based disease detection approach on potato leaves. In:
2020 3rd International conference on intelligent sustainable systems (ICISS). IEEE, pp 428–432
Atila Ü, Uçar M, Akyol K, Uçar E (2021) Plant leaf disease classification using EfficientNet deep learn-
ing model. Eco Inform 61:101182
Atole RR, Park D (2018) A multiclass deep convolutional neural network classifier for detection of common
rice plant anomalies. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl 9(1)
Bangari S, Rachana P, Gupta N, Sudi PS, Baniya KK (2022) A survey on disease detection of a potato
leaf using cnn. In: 2022 Second international conference on artificial intelligence and smart energy
(ICAIS). IEEE, pp 144–149
Barbedo JGA, Koenigkan LV, Santos TT (2016) Identifying multiple plant diseases using digital image
processing. Biosys Eng 147:104–116

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
167 Page 28 of 29 M. Iftikhar et al.

Barman U, Sahu D, Barman GG, Das J (2020) Comparative assessment of deep learning to detect the
leaf diseases of potato based on data augmentation. In: 2020 International conference on computa-
tional performance evaluation (ComPE). IEEE, pp 682–687
Bi C, Wang J, Duan Y, Fu B, Kang JR, Shi Y (2022) MobileNet based apple leaf diseases identifica-
tion. Mobile Networks Appl 27:172–180. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1007/​s11036-​020-​01640-1
Butale NM, Kodavade DV (2019) Detection of plant leaf diseases using image processing and soft-
computing techniques. Int Res J Eng Technol 6:3288–3291
Camargo A, Smith JS (2009) Image pattern classification for the identification of disease causing agents
in plants. Comput Electron Agric 66(2):121–125
Chauhan R, Ghanshala KK, Joshi RC (2018) Convolutional neural network (CNN) for image detection
and recognition. In: 2018 First international conference on secure cyber computing and communi-
cation (ICSCCC). IEEE, pp 278–282
Chen J, Chen J, Zhang D, Sun Y, Nanehkaran YA (2020) Using deep transfer learning for image-based
plant disease identification. Comput Electron Agric 173:105393
Daphal SD, Koli SM (2023) Enhancing sugarcane disease classification with ensemble deep learning:
a comparative study with transfer learning techniques. Heliyon 9(8):e18261. https://​doi.​org/​10.​
1016/j.​heliy​on.​2023.​e18261
PlantVillage Dataset (2023) [Online]. Available: https://​www.​kaggle.​com/​datas​ets/​abdal​lahal​idev/​plant​
villa​ge-​datas​et. Accessed 24 May 2024
DeChant C, Wiesner-Hanks T, Chen S, Stewart EL, Yosinski J, Gore MA, Lipson H (2017) Automated
identification of northern leaf blight-infected maize plants from field imagery using deep learning.
Phytopathology 107(11):1426–1432
Devi RS, Kumar VR, Sivakumar P (2023) EfficientNetV2 model for plant disease classification and pest
recognition. Comput Syst Sci Eng 45(2):2249–2263. https://​doi.​org/​10.​32604/​csse.​2023.​032231
Durmuş H, Güneş EO, Kırcı M (2017) Disease detection on the leaves of the tomato plants by using
deep learning. In: 2017 6th International conference on agro-geoinformatics. IEEE, pp 1–5
Enkvetchakul P, Surinta O (2022) Effective data augmentation and training techniques for improving
deep learning in plant leaf disease recognition. App Sci Eng Prog 15(3):3810–3810
Fuentes A, Yoon S, Kim SC, Park DS (2017) A robust deep-learning-based detector for real-time tomato
plant diseases and pests recognition. Sensors 17(9):2022
Hang Y, Xiangyan M, Qiufeng Wu (2024) Application of improved lightweight network and Choquet
fuzzy ensemble technology for soybean disease identification. IEEE Access, 12:25146–25163.
https://​doi.​org/​10.​1109/​ACCESS.​2024.​33658​29
Hlaing CS, Zaw SMM (2017) Model-based statistical features for mobile phone image of tomato plant
disease classification. In 2017 18th international conference on parallel and distributed computing,
applications and technologies (PDCAT). IEEE, pp 223–229
Hlaing CS, Zaw SMM (2018) Tomato plant diseases classification using statistical texture feature and
color feature. In: 2018 IEEE/ACIS 17th International conference on computer and information sci-
ence (ICIS). IEEE, pp 439–444
How to Build Mobile Apps with Flutter (2023) [Online]. Available: https://​www.​freec​odeca​mp.​org/​
news/​how-​to-​build-​mobile-​apps-​with-​flutt​er/. Accessed 24 May 2024
Hu G, Yang X, Zhang Y, Wan M (2019) Identification of tea leaf diseases by using an improved deep
convolutional neural network. Sustain Comput: Inf Syst 24:100353
Islam MT (2020) Plant disease detection using CNN model and image processing. Int J Eng Res Technol
9(10):291–297
Kaur I, Aggarwal G, Verma A (2016) Detection and classification of disease affected region of plant
leaves using image processing. Indian J Sci Technol 9:48
Kaur P et al (2022) Recognition of leaf disease using hybrid convolutional neural network by applying
feature reduction. Sensors 22.2:575
Kaur P, Mishra AM, Goyal N, Gupta SK, Shankar A, Viriyasitavat W (2024) A novel hybrid CNN meth-
odology for automated leaf disease detection and classification. Expert Syst e13543. https://​doi.​org/​
10.​1111/​exsy.​13543
Khalid MM, Karan O (2023) Deep Learning for Plant Disease Detection. Int J Mathem Stat Comput Sci
2:75–84. https://​doi.​org/​10.​59543/​ijmscs.​v2i.​8343
Li Y, Nie J, Chao X (2020) Do we really need deep CNN for plant diseases identification? Comput Elec-
tron Agric 178:105803
Liu B, Zhang Y, He D, Li Y (2018) Identification of Apple Leaf Diseases Based on Deep Convolutional
Neural Networks. Symmetry 10(1):1. https://​doi.​org/​10.​3390/​sym10​010011
Lu Y, Yi S, Zeng N, Liu Y, Zhang Y (2017) Identification of rice diseases using deep convolutional neu-
ral networks. Neurocomputing 267:378–384

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Plant disease management: a fine‑tuned enhanced CNN approach… Page 29 of 29 167

Mishra AM et al (2022) Weed density estimation in soya bean crop using deep convolutional neural net-
works in smart agriculture. J Plant Dis Prot 1293:593–604
Mohanty SP, Hughes DP, Salathé M (2016) Using deep learning for image-based plant disease detection.
Front Plant Sci 7:1419
Nachtigall LG (2016) Classificação de distúrbios em folhas de macieiras utilizando redes neurais con-
volucionais (Master’s thesis, Universidade Federal de Pelotas)
Nagaraju M et al (2022) Convolution network model based leaf disease detection using augmentation
techniques. Exp Syst 394:e12885
Ozguven MM, Adem K (2019) Automatic detection and classification of leaf spot disease in sugar beet
using deep learning algorithms. Physica A 535:122537
Padol PB, Yadav AA (2016) SVM classifier based grape leaf disease detection. In: 2016 Conference on
advances in signal processing (CASP). IEEE, pp 175–179
Patel K, Atul P (2024) LeafGuard: efficient soybean leaf defect classification in indian agriculture using
fine-tuned CNN. Int J Intell Syst Appl Eng 12.16:16–24
Poojary R, Pai A (2019) Comparative study of model optimization techniques in fine-tuned CNN mod-
els. In: 2019 International conference on electrical and computing technologies and applications
(ICECTA). IEEE, pp 1–4
Pujari D, Yakkundimath R, Byadgi AS (2016) SVM and ANN based classification of plant diseases
using feature reduction technique. IJIMAI 3(7):6–14
Rai CK, Roop P (2024) Northern maize leaf blight disease detection and segmentation using deep con-
volution neural networks. Multimed Tools Appl 83.7:19415–19432
Ramcharan A, McCloskey P, Baranowski K, Mbilinyi N, Mrisho L, Ndalahwa M, Hughes DP (2019) A
mobile-based deep learning model for cassava disease diagnosis. Front Plant Sci 10:425916
Saleem MH, Potgieter J, Arif KM (2020) Plant disease classification: A comparative evaluation of con-
volutional neural networks and deep learning optimizers. Plants 9(10):1319
Sankaran S, Mishra A, Ehsani R, Davis C (2010) A review of advanced techniques for detecting plant
diseases. Comput Electron Agric 72(1):1–13
Sathya K, Rajalakshmi M (2022) RDA-CNN: Enhanced super resolution method for rice plant disease
classification. Comput Syst Sci Eng 42(1):33–47. https://​doi.​org/​10.​32604/​csse.​2022.​022206
Sharma P, Berwal YPS, Ghai W (2019) Performance analysis of deep learning CNN models for disease
detection in plants using image segmentation. Information Processing in Agriculture 7(4):566–574
Shrestha G, Das M, Dey N (2020) Plant disease detection using CNN. In: 2020 IEEE Applied signal
processing conference (ASPCON). IEEE, pp 109–113
Singh V, Chug A, Singh AP (2023) Classification of Beans Leaf Diseases using Fine Tuned CNN Model.
Proc Comput Sci 218:348–356
Soujanya K, Jabez J (2021) Recognition of plant diseases by leaf image classification based on Improved
AlexNet. In: 2021 2nd International conference on smart electronics and communication (ICOSEC).
IEEE, pp 1306–1313
Subramanian M, Lv NP, Ve S (2022) Hyperparameter optimization for transfer learning of VGG16 for dis-
ease identification in corn leaves using Bayesian optimization. Big Data 10(3):215–229
Tuncer A (2021) Cost-optimized hybrid convolutional neural networks for detection of plant leaf diseases. J
Ambient Intell Humaniz Comput 12(8):8625–8636
Verma S, Chug A, Singh AP (2018) Prediction models for identification and diagnosis of tomato plant dis-
eases. In: 2018 International conference on advances in computing, communications and informatics
(ICACCI). IEEE, pp 1557–1563
Verma S, Chug A, Singh AP (2020) Impact of hyperparameter tuning on deep learning based estimation of
disease severity in grape plant. In: Recent advances on soft computing and data mining: proceedings of
the fourth international conference on soft computing and data mining (SCDM 2020). Melaka, Malay-
sia, January 22–⁠ 23, 2020. Springer International Publishing, pp 161–171
Yi N, Li C, Feng X, Shi M (2018) Research and improvement of convolutional neural network. In: 2018
IEEE/ACIS 17th International conference on computer and information science (ICIS). IEEE, pp
637–640
Zhang Y, Wa S, Liu Y, Zhou X, Sun P, Ma Q (2021) High-accuracy detection of maize leaf diseases CNN
based on multi-pathway activation function module. Remote Sensing 13(21):4218

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

13
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Terms and Conditions
Springer Nature journal content, brought to you courtesy of Springer Nature Customer Service Center
GmbH (“Springer Nature”).
Springer Nature supports a reasonable amount of sharing of research papers by authors, subscribers
and authorised users (“Users”), for small-scale personal, non-commercial use provided that all
copyright, trade and service marks and other proprietary notices are maintained. By accessing,
sharing, receiving or otherwise using the Springer Nature journal content you agree to these terms of
use (“Terms”). For these purposes, Springer Nature considers academic use (by researchers and
students) to be non-commercial.
These Terms are supplementary and will apply in addition to any applicable website terms and
conditions, a relevant site licence or a personal subscription. These Terms will prevail over any
conflict or ambiguity with regards to the relevant terms, a site licence or a personal subscription (to
the extent of the conflict or ambiguity only). For Creative Commons-licensed articles, the terms of
the Creative Commons license used will apply.
We collect and use personal data to provide access to the Springer Nature journal content. We may
also use these personal data internally within ResearchGate and Springer Nature and as agreed share
it, in an anonymised way, for purposes of tracking, analysis and reporting. We will not otherwise
disclose your personal data outside the ResearchGate or the Springer Nature group of companies
unless we have your permission as detailed in the Privacy Policy.
While Users may use the Springer Nature journal content for small scale, personal non-commercial
use, it is important to note that Users may not:

1. use such content for the purpose of providing other users with access on a regular or large scale
basis or as a means to circumvent access control;
2. use such content where to do so would be considered a criminal or statutory offence in any
jurisdiction, or gives rise to civil liability, or is otherwise unlawful;
3. falsely or misleadingly imply or suggest endorsement, approval , sponsorship, or association
unless explicitly agreed to by Springer Nature in writing;
4. use bots or other automated methods to access the content or redirect messages
5. override any security feature or exclusionary protocol; or
6. share the content in order to create substitute for Springer Nature products or services or a
systematic database of Springer Nature journal content.
In line with the restriction against commercial use, Springer Nature does not permit the creation of a
product or service that creates revenue, royalties, rent or income from our content or its inclusion as
part of a paid for service or for other commercial gain. Springer Nature journal content cannot be
used for inter-library loans and librarians may not upload Springer Nature journal content on a large
scale into their, or any other, institutional repository.
These terms of use are reviewed regularly and may be amended at any time. Springer Nature is not
obligated to publish any information or content on this website and may remove it or features or
functionality at our sole discretion, at any time with or without notice. Springer Nature may revoke
this licence to you at any time and remove access to any copies of the Springer Nature journal content
which have been saved.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Springer Nature makes no warranties, representations or
guarantees to Users, either express or implied with respect to the Springer nature journal content and
all parties disclaim and waive any implied warranties or warranties imposed by law, including
merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.
Please note that these rights do not automatically extend to content, data or other material published
by Springer Nature that may be licensed from third parties.
If you would like to use or distribute our Springer Nature journal content to a wider audience or on a
regular basis or in any other manner not expressly permitted by these Terms, please contact Springer
Nature at

[email protected]