Effect of Data Augmentation in the Classification and Validation of Tomato Plant Disease with Deep Learning Methods

The paper discusses disease identification and classification in tomato plants, as well as the effect of data augmentation in deep learning models. The database used here is Tomato plant leaves (TPL) images from the PlantVillage Database in the healthy and disease classes. The disease categories have been chosen depending on their occurrence in the Indian States. The proposed ResNet50, ResNet18, and ResNet101 deep-learning model with transfer learning combined with the softmax classification are used to identify and categorize the tomato leaf images into the healthy or diseases classes in the dataset. The unique combination of including the noise and blur in the images and position and color data augmentation makes the dataset robust. Two different data augmentation methods are used for the classification problem, and significant improvement is seen in the classification accuracy with the proposed augmented dataset. The model’s success rate makes the model helpful in extending support in validating a model for identifying plant disease. The validation of models is done on PlantVillage and images taken at Krishi Vigyan Kendra Narayangaon, Pune, India. ResNet101 model trained with augmented dataset outperforms the testing accuracy of 99.99% and validation accuracy of 95.83%.