From Code to Field: Evaluating the Robustness of Convolutional Neural Networks for Disease Diagnosis in Mango Leaves

TL;DR

This study evaluates the robustness of CNN models for mango leaf disease diagnosis under various real-world image corruptions, highlighting the superiority of lightweight, specialized architectures like LCNN for practical agricultural applications.

Contribution

It introduces a methodology for robustness assessment of CNNs in agricultural disease diagnosis and benchmarks five architectures using a corrupted mango leaf dataset.

Findings

LCNN outperforms complex models in corruption scenarios

Modern architectures degrade significantly under image corruptions

Lightweight models are more suitable for edge devices in agriculture

Abstract

The validation and verification of artificial intelligence (AI) models through robustness assessment are essential to guarantee the reliable performance of intelligent systems facing real-world challenges, such as image corruptions including noise, blurring, and weather variations. Despite the global importance of mango (Mangifera indica L.), there is a lack of studies on the robustness of models for the diagnosis of disease in its leaves. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate convolutional neural networks (CNNs) under adverse conditions. We adapted the MangoLeafDB dataset, generating MangoLeafDB-C with 19 types of artificial corruptions at five severity levels. We conducted a benchmark comparing five architectures: ResNet-50, ResNet-101, VGG-16, Xception, and LCNN (the latter being a lightweight architecture designed specifically for mango leaf diagnosis). The metrics include the F1 score, the corruption error (CE) and the relative mean corruption error (relative mCE). The results show that LCNN outperformed complex models in corruptions that can be present in real-world scenarios such as Defocus Blur, Motion Blur, while also achieving the lowest mCE. Modern architectures (e.g., ResNet-101) exhibited significant performance degradation in corrupted scenarios, despite their high accuracy under ideal conditions. These findings suggest that lightweight and specialized models may be more suitable for real-world applications in edge devices, where robustness and efficiency are critical. The study highlights the need to incorporate robustness assessments in the development of intelligent systems for agriculture, particularly in regions with technological limitations.