Optimizing precision agriculture: Bayesian-enhanced papaya (Carica papaya L.) fruit disease classification via cubic SVM and ResNet-101 deep features

Abstract

With the rise of the fruit processing industry, machine learning and image processing have become necessary for quality control and monitoring of fruits. Recently, strong vision-based solutions have emerged in farming industries that make inspections more accurate at a much lower cost. Advanced deep learning methods play a key role in these solutions. In this study, we built an image-based framework that uses the ResNet-101 CNN model to identify different types of papaya fruit diseases with minimal training data and processing power. A case study to identify commonly encountered papaya fruit diseases during harvesting was used to support the results of the suggested methodology. A total of 983 images of both healthy and defective papaya were considered during the experiment. In this study, we initially used the ResNet-101 CNN model for classification and then combined the deep features drawn out from the activation layer (fc1000) of the ResNet-101 CNN along with a multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) to classify papaya fruit defect detection. After comparing the performance of both approaches, it was found that Cubic SVM is the best classifier using the deep feature of ResNet-101 CNN, achieved with an accuracy of 99.5% and an area under the curve (AUC) of 1 without any classification error. The findings of this experiment reveal that the ResNet-101 CNN with the cubic SVM model can categorize good, diseased, and defective papaya pictures. Moreover, the suggested model executed the task in a greater way in terms of the F1- Score (0.99), sensitivity (99.50%), and precision (99.71%). The present work not only assists the end user in determining the type of disease but also makes it possible for them to take corrective measures during farming.