Improved inception-V3 model for apple leaf disease classification

Abstract

Apple, a nutrient-rich fruit belonging to the genus Malus, is recognized for its fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants, giving health benefits such as improved digestion and reduced cardiovascular disease risk. In Indonesia, the soil and climate create favorable conditions for apple cultivation. However, it is essential to prioritize the health of the plant. Biotic factors, such as fungal infections like apple scabs and pests, alongside abiotic factors like temperature and soil moisture, impact the health of apple plants. Computer vision, specifically convolution neural network (CNN) inception-V3, proves effective in aiding farmers in identifying these diseases. The output layer in inception-V3 is essential, generating predictions based on input data. For this reason, in this paper, we add an output layer in inception-V3 architecture to increase the accuracy of apple leaf disease classification. The added output layers are dense, dropout, and batch normalization. Adding a dense layer after flattening typically consolidates the extracted features into a more compact representation. Dropout can help prevent overfitting by randomly deactivating some units during training. Batch normalization helps normalize activations across batches, speeding up training and providing stability to the model. Test results show that the proposed method produced an accuracy of 99.27% and can increase accuracy by 1.85% compared to inception-V3. These enhancements showcase the potential of leveraging computer vision for precise disease diagnosis in apple crops.