A Hybrid Approach for the Detection and Classification of Tomato Leaf Diseases

Featured Application: This system will help the farmer to detect plant any disease at very early stage to take timely pre-emptive action. In this paper, we proposed a hybrid deep learning approach for detecting and classifying tomato plant leaf diseases early. This hybrid system is a combination of a convolutional neural network (CNN), convolutional attention module (CBAM), and support vector machines (SVM). Initially, the proposed model can detect nine different tomato diseases but is not limited to this. The proposed system is tested using a database containing images of tomato leaves. The obtained results were very encouraging, giving us accuracy up to 97.2%, which can be improved with the improvement of learning processes. The proposed system is very efficient and lightweight, so the farmer can install it on any smart device having a digital camera and processing capabilities. With a bit of training, a farmer can detect any disease immediately, which will help him take timely pre-emptive action.