Fusion of AI Techniques: A Hybrid Approach for Precise Plant Leaf Disease Classification

Classification of plant leaf diseases is an important step in protecting the world's food supply and agricultural yields. There has been encouraging progress in improving the efficiency and accuracy of plant leaf disease diagnosis via the combination of deep learning methods with artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years. This research introduces a new hybrid strategy, CNN+SVM and CNN+RF, that uses deep learning techniques like Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) in conjunction with more traditional machine learning algorithms like Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Moreover, two hybrid variants, CNN + RF and CNN + SVM, are proposed to exploit the strengths of both paradigms synergistically. To further improve classification accuracy, the study employs Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) as a feature selection technique. PSO optimizes the feature subset for each classification model, facilitating the extraction of the most informative features, which leads to better discrimination between healthy and diseased plants. The dataset used for experimentation consists of a comprehensive collection of plant leaf images representing various diseases across multiple plant species. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed hybrid approach compared to individual classification methods. The hybrid models achieve higher accuracy rates and improved generalization performance, showcasing the synergistic benefits of combining AI and deep learning techniques. Furthermore, the feature selection process through PSO contributes significantly to enhancing the classification outcomes, providing insights into the discriminative power of selected features. This research contributes to the advancement of plant leaf disease classification methodologies by offering an innovative hybrid approach that leverages the complementary strengths of AI, deep learning, and feature selection techniques. The study's findings underscore the potential for improving plant leaf disease management strategies, ultimately leading to enhanced crop productivity and sustainable agriculture. The proposed hybrid framework can serve as a blueprint for similar classification tasks in other domains, demonstrating the broader impact of synergizing different AI techniques for improved accuracy and performance. CNN+RF gives 95% accuracy, 93% precision, 96% recall and 94% F1 score, whereas CNN+SVM gives 93% accuracy, 91% precision, 94% recall and 92% F1 score.