2023 International Conference on Network, Multimedia and Information Technology (NMITCON)

Performance Analysis of Pre-trained Deep Learning

Architectures for Classification of Corn Leaf
Diseases
Praveen Kumar Nalli M. Venkata Subbarao Durga Prasad Garapati
Department of AI, Department of ECE, Department of AI,
2023 International Conference on Network, Multimedia and Information Technology (NMITCON) | 979-8-3503-0082-6/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/NMITCON58196.2023.10275915

Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women,
Bhimavaram, India Bhimavaram, India Bhimavaram, India
praveenkumar.nalli@svecw.edu.in mandava.decs@gmail.com durgaprasad_garapati@svecw.edu.in

Swaroop K P R.Priyakanth G Prasanna Kumar

Department of EEE, Department of ECE, Department of ECE,
Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, BVRIT Hyderabad College of Vishnu Institute of Technology,
Bhimavaram, India Engineering for Women, India Bhimavaram, India
swaroopkp@svecw.edu.in priyakanth.r@bvrithyderabad.edu.in godiprasanna@gmail.com

Abstract— The agriculture sector plays a crucial role in supplying
high-quality food and contributes the most to expanding
economies and populations. Plant infections can cause significant
harvest losses and the extinction of species. The swift
identification of plant illnesses by means of precise or automated
detection techniques can improve the quality of food production
and reduce economic losses. In recent years, deep learning has
significantly enhanced the accuracy of image classification and
object detection systems' recognition capabilities. This study
discovers four distinct leaf types on the leaves of corn and
classifies them according to the plant diseases that cause them.
These leaf varieties are referred to as blight, common rust, grey
leaf spot and healthy leaves. The number of samples collected for
each is 1306, 574, 1146, and 1164, respectively. By extracting deep
features, three distinct enhanced deep neural networks (DNNs)
are used to classify corn leaf disease. The validation accuracy, test
accuracy, prediction, recall, F1 score, and area under the curve
(AUC) are analysed to determine performance. From the
extensive investigations, it is noted that the classification accuracy
for the models is as follows: 92.6% for CNN, 94.3% for AlexNet,
95.7% for SqueezeNet, and 97.3% for Xception. The findings
indicate that the models produced during the investigation phase
to identify the leaf disease were superior to those of any current
machine learning (ML) classifiers.
Keywords: Corn Leaf Disease classification, CNN, AlexNet,
SqueezeNet, Xception
I. INTRODUCTION
Corn crops, scientifically known as Zea mays, are a
globally cultivated staple cereal crop. They are prized for their
adaptability and nutritional value. Corn is cultivated for
multiple purposes, including human consumption, animal feed,
and industrial applications. The kernels may be ingested fresh,
dried, or processed into a variety of food products, including
cornmeal, corn flour, and corn oil. In addition to its
significance as a food commodity, maize plays an important
role in the production of biofuels[1]. The kernels can be
converted into ethanol, a renewable fuel source used to
decrease reliance on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.
Corn is highly adaptable and can be grown in a variety of
climates and soil types. However, optimal growth requires
mild temperatures and sufficient rainfall or irrigation.
Depending on the variety and geographic region, maize is
typically planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer
or early fall. Corn crops provide producers with significant
economic benefits and contribute to global food security and
agricultural economies. The cultivation and processing of corn
supports industries involved in the production of sustenance,
animal husbandry, ethanol, and other industrial applications.
Overall, Corn crops are a vital component of global
agriculture, providing food, feed, and fuel and serving as a
versatile and economically significant crop that plays an
essential role in meeting the agricultural and nutritional
requirements of the world.
Since these corn plants are primarily afflicted by the
diseases blight, grey leaf spot, and common rust, they are
susceptible to their spread [2]. These maladies have a major
impact on crop cultivation. The effects of this disease are
evident on the foliage of the corn plants. Multiple pathogens,
including fungi, bacteria, and viruses, can cause blights.
Lesions are frequently formed on the leaves, stalks, husks, and
ears of the maize plant because of blight diseases. The size,
shape, and colour of lesions can vary depending on the specific
blight pathogen. They may appear as spots, patches, dashes, or
blotches of irregular shape. Grey leaf spot (GLS) is a fungal
disease caused by Cercospora zeae-maydis. It begins with tiny,
rectangular lesions that have a greyish centre and a dark brown
or tan border. As the disease progresses, the lesions can
elongate and coalesce, resulting in larger necrotic areas of
irregular shape on the foliage. Severe infections can cause
premature leaf mortality, thereby diminishing a plant's
photosynthetic ability. The fungus Puccinia sorghi causes the
malady known as common rust. Even though common rust can
cause injury to maize plants, it is generally regarded as a less
severe disease than other maize diseases. On both surfaces of
maize leaves, common rust appears as small, circular to

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