PotatoPestNet: A CTInceptionV3-RS-Based Neural Network for Accurate Identification of Potato Pests

TL;DR

This paper introduces PotatoPestNet, a transfer learning-based neural network system that accurately classifies eight types of potato pests, achieving over 91% accuracy through hyperparameter tuning and data augmentation.

Contribution

The study develops a novel PotatoPestNet system using transfer learning and random search optimization, improving pest classification accuracy over existing methods.

Findings

CTInceptionV3 achieved 91% accuracy

Model effectively handles imbalanced datasets

Hyperparameter tuning significantly improved performance

Abstract

Potatoes are the third-largest food crop globally, but their production frequently encounters difficulties because of aggressive pest infestations. The aim of this study is to investigate the various types and characteristics of these pests and propose an efficient PotatoPestNet AI-based automatic potato pest identification system. To accomplish this, we curated a reliable dataset consisting of eight types of potato pests. We leveraged the power of transfer learning by employing five customized, pre-trained transfer learning models: CMobileNetV2, CNASLargeNet, CXception, CDenseNet201, and CInceptionV3, in proposing a robust PotatoPestNet model to accurately classify potato pests. To improve the models' performance, we applied various augmentation techniques, incorporated a global average pooling layer, and implemented proper regularization methods. To further enhance the performance of the models, we utilized random search (RS) optimization for hyperparameter tuning. This optimization technique played a significant role in fine-tuning the models and achieving improved performance. We evaluated the models both visually and quantitatively, utilizing different evaluation metrics. The robustness of the models in handling imbalanced datasets was assessed using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. Among the models, the Customized Tuned Inception V3 (CTInceptionV3) model, optimized through random search, demonstrated outstanding performance. It achieved the highest accuracy (91%), precision (91%), recall (91%), and F1-score (91%), showcasing its superior ability to accurately identify and classify potato pests.