Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture

A special issue of AgriEngineering (ISSN 2624-7402). This special issue belongs to the section "Computer Applications and Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 December 2024 | Viewed by 8841

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Next Generation Internet of Everything Laboratory, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Nottingham Ningbo, 199 Taikang E Rd., Yinzhou, Ningbo 315104, China
Interests: Internet of Things; machine learning; mobile communications; global navigation satellite system (GNSS); satellite communications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the need for farming to become more efficient and environmentally sustainable to meet the demands of a growing global population, the application of artificial neural networks to inform and enhance agricultural practice and production is gathering pace.

This Special Issue aims to showcase the latest research findings in the use of Artificial Neural Networks and related technologies when applied to agricultural practice.

The introduction of technologies, such as the fifth-generation mobile, the Internet of Things, and unmanned aerial vehicles, is creating new opportunities to gather extensive digital datasets in real-time, which can then be used by models with the ability to learn from and interpret this information. At the heart of this way of working are the concepts of artificial neural networks, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

In this Special Issue, original, high-quality research articles and reviews are welcome.

Research areas include but are not limited to how artificial neural network technology may be applied to:

  • Improving crop yields using datasets provided by the Internet of Things technologies.
  • Enhancing land usage from geographical imagery produced by high-resolution satellites or UAV platforms.
  • Targeting the use of fertilizers and weed control products to areas where needed by analyzing the quality of the soil from in situ sensors.
  • Determining the health and quality of plants and the risk of disease from high-resolution graphical imagery.
  • Applying irrigation to areas where needed from information provided by sensors and land imagery.
  • Identifying the optimum time to sow and harvest crops.
  • Case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of Artificial Neural Networks on precision agriculture in practical situations.

Prof. Dr. Ray E. Sheriff
Dr. Chiew Foong Kwong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. AgriEngineering is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • artificial neural networks
  • datasets
  • deep learning
  • image processing
  • internet of things
  • machine learning
  • precision agriculture
  • smart farming
  • training and inference

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 7466 KiB  
Article
A Performance Comparison of CNN Models for Bean Phenology Classification Using Transfer Learning Techniques
by Teodoro Ibarra-Pérez, Ramón Jaramillo-Martínez, Hans C. Correa-Aguado, Christophe Ndjatchi, Ma. del Rosario Martínez-Blanco, Héctor A. Guerrero-Osuna, Flabio D. Mirelez-Delgado, José I. Casas-Flores, Rafael Reveles-Martínez and Umanel A. Hernández-González
AgriEngineering 2024, 6(1), 841-857; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering6010048 - 18 Mar 2024
Viewed by 638
Abstract
The early and precise identification of the different phenological stages of the bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) allows for the determination of critical and timely moments for the implementation of certain agricultural activities that contribute in a significant manner to the output and [...] Read more.
The early and precise identification of the different phenological stages of the bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) allows for the determination of critical and timely moments for the implementation of certain agricultural activities that contribute in a significant manner to the output and quality of the harvest, as well as the necessary actions to prevent and control possible damage caused by plagues and diseases. Overall, the standard procedure for phenological identification is conducted by the farmer. This can lead to the possibility of overlooking important findings during the phenological development of the plant, which could result in the appearance of plagues and diseases. In recent years, deep learning (DL) methods have been used to analyze crop behavior and minimize risk in agricultural decision making. One of the most used DL methods in image processing is the convolutional neural network (CNN) due to its high capacity for learning relevant features and recognizing objects in images. In this article, a transfer learning approach and a data augmentation method were applied. A station equipped with RGB cameras was used to gather data from images during the complete phenological cycle of the bean. The information gathered was used to create a set of data to evaluate the performance of each of the four proposed network models: AlexNet, VGG19, SqueezeNet, and GoogleNet. The metrics used were accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-Score. The results of the best architecture obtained in the validation were those of GoogleNet, which obtained 96.71% accuracy, 96.81% precision, 95.77% sensitivity, 98.73% specificity, and 96.25% F1-Score. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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21 pages, 13276 KiB  
Article
Enhanced Deep Learning Architecture for Rapid and Accurate Tomato Plant Disease Diagnosis
by Shahab Ul Islam, Shahab Zaib, Giampaolo Ferraioli, Vito Pascazio, Gilda Schirinzi and Ghassan Husnain
AgriEngineering 2024, 6(1), 375-395; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering6010023 - 12 Feb 2024
Viewed by 745
Abstract
Deep neural networks have demonstrated outstanding performances in agriculture production. Agriculture production is one of the most important sectors because it has a direct impact on the economy and social life of any society. Plant disease identification is a big challenge for agriculture [...] Read more.
Deep neural networks have demonstrated outstanding performances in agriculture production. Agriculture production is one of the most important sectors because it has a direct impact on the economy and social life of any society. Plant disease identification is a big challenge for agriculture production, for which we need a fast and accurate technique to identify plant disease. With the recent advancement in deep learning, we can develop a robust and accurate system. This research investigated the use of deep learning for accurate and fast tomato plant disease identification. In this research, we have used individual and merged datasets of tomato plants with 10 diseases (including healthy plants). The main aim of this work is to check the accuracy of the existing convolutional neural network models such as Visual Geometry Group, Residual Net, and DenseNet on tomato plant disease detection and then design a custom deep neural network model to give the best accuracy in case of the tomato plant. We have trained and tested our models with datasets containing over 18,000 and 25,000 images with 10 classes. We achieved over 99% accuracy with our custom model. This high accuracy was achieved with less training time and lower computational cost compared to other CNNs. This research demonstrates the potential of deep learning for efficient and accurate tomato plant disease detection, which can benefit farmers and contribute to improved agricultural production. The custom model’s efficient performance makes it promising for practical implementation in real-world agricultural settings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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16 pages, 16871 KiB  
Article
Alpha-EIOU-YOLOv8: An Improved Algorithm for Rice Leaf Disease Detection
by Dong Cong Trinh, Anh Tuan Mac, Khanh Giap Dang, Huong Thanh Nguyen, Hoc Thai Nguyen and Thanh Dang Bui
AgriEngineering 2024, 6(1), 302-317; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering6010018 - 04 Feb 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1382
Abstract
Early detection of plant leaf diseases is a major necessity for controlling the spread of infections and enhancing the quality of food crops. Recently, plant disease detection based on deep learning approaches has achieved better performance than current state-of-the-art methods. Hence, this paper [...] Read more.
Early detection of plant leaf diseases is a major necessity for controlling the spread of infections and enhancing the quality of food crops. Recently, plant disease detection based on deep learning approaches has achieved better performance than current state-of-the-art methods. Hence, this paper utilized a convolutional neural network (CNN) to improve rice leaf disease detection efficiency. We present a modified YOLOv8, which replaces the original Box Loss function by our proposed combination of EIoU loss and α-IoU loss in order to improve the performance of the rice leaf disease detection system. A two-stage approach is proposed to achieve a high accuracy of rice leaf disease identification based on AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms. In the first stage, the images of rice leaf diseases in the field are automatically collected. Afterward, these image data are separated into blast leaf, leaf folder, and brown spot sets, respectively. In the second stage, after training the YOLOv8 model on our proposed image dataset, the trained model is deployed on IoT devices to detect and identify rice leaf diseases. In order to assess the performance of the proposed approach, a comparative study between our proposed method and the methods using YOLOv7 and YOLOv5 is conducted. The experimental results demonstrate that the accuracy of our proposed model in this research has reached up to 89.9% on the dataset of 3175 images with 2608 images for training, 326 images for validation, and 241 images for testing. It demonstrates that our proposed approach achieves a higher accuracy rate than existing approaches. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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20 pages, 2985 KiB  
Article
Predicting the Power Requirement of Agricultural Machinery Using ANN and Regression Models and the Optimization of Parameters Using an ANN–PSO Technique
by Ganesh Upadhyay, Neeraj Kumar, Hifjur Raheman and Rashmi Dubey
AgriEngineering 2024, 6(1), 185-204; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering6010012 - 18 Jan 2024
Viewed by 587
Abstract
Optimizing the design and operational parameters for tillage tools is crucial for improved performance. Recently, artificial intelligence approaches, like ANN with learning capabilities, have gained attention for cost-effective and timely problem solving. Soil-bin experiments were conducted and data were used to develop ANN [...] Read more.
Optimizing the design and operational parameters for tillage tools is crucial for improved performance. Recently, artificial intelligence approaches, like ANN with learning capabilities, have gained attention for cost-effective and timely problem solving. Soil-bin experiments were conducted and data were used to develop ANN and regression models using gang angle, velocity ratio, soil CI, and depth as input parameters, while tractor equivalent PTO (PTOeq) power was used as an output. Both models were trained with a randomly selected 90% of the data, reserving 10% for testing purposes. In regression, models were iteratively fitted using nonlinear least-squares optimization. The ANN model utilized a multilayer feed-forward network with a backpropagation algorithm. The comparative performance of both models was evaluated in terms of R2 and mean square error (MSE). The ANN model outperformed the regression model in the training, testing, and validation phases. A well-trained ANN model was integrated with the particle-swarm optimization (PSO) technique for optimization of the operational parameters. The optimized configuration featured a 36.6° gang angle, 0.50 MPa CI, 100 mm depth, and 3.90 velocity ratio for a predicted tractor PTOeq power of 3.36 kW against an actual value of 3.45 kW. ANN–PSO predicted the optimal parameters with a variation between the predicted and the actual tractor PTOeq power within ±6.85%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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16 pages, 3660 KiB  
Article
Dynamic Behavior Forecast of an Experimental Indirect Solar Dryer Using an Artificial Neural Network
by Angel Tlatelpa Becerro, Ramiro Rico Martínez, Erick César López-Vidaña, Esteban Montiel Palacios, César Torres Segundo and José Luis Gadea Pacheco
AgriEngineering 2023, 5(4), 2423-2438; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5040149 - 14 Dec 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 953
Abstract
This research presents the prediction of temperatures in the chamber of a solar dryer using artificial neural networks (ANN). The dryer is a forced-flow type and indirect. Climatic conditions, temperatures, airflow, and geometric parameters were considered to build the ANN model. The model [...] Read more.
This research presents the prediction of temperatures in the chamber of a solar dryer using artificial neural networks (ANN). The dryer is a forced-flow type and indirect. Climatic conditions, temperatures, airflow, and geometric parameters were considered to build the ANN model. The model was a feed-forward network trained using a backpropagation algorithm and Levenberg–Marquardt optimization. The configuration of the optimal neural network to carry out the verification and validation processes was nine neurons in the input layer, one in the output layer, and two hidden layers of thirteen and twelve neurons each (9-13-12-1). The percentage error of the predictive model was below 1%. The predictive model has been successfully tested, achieving a predictor with good capabilities. This consistency is reflected in the relative error between the predicted and experimental temperatures. The error is below 0.25% for the model’s verification and validation. Moreover, this model could be the basis for developing a powerful real-time operation optimization tool and the optimal design for indirect solar dryers to reduce cost and time in food-drying processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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14 pages, 661 KiB  
Article
A Transfer Learning-Based Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Detection of Fusarium Wilt in Banana Crops
by Kevin Yan, Md Kamran Chowdhury Shisher and Yin Sun
AgriEngineering 2023, 5(4), 2381-2394; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5040146 - 11 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1194
Abstract
During the 1950s, the Gros Michel species of bananas were nearly wiped out by the incurable Fusarium Wilt, also known as Panama Disease. Originating in Southeast Asia, Fusarium Wilt is a banana pandemic that has been threatening the multi-billion-dollar banana industry worldwide. The [...] Read more.
During the 1950s, the Gros Michel species of bananas were nearly wiped out by the incurable Fusarium Wilt, also known as Panama Disease. Originating in Southeast Asia, Fusarium Wilt is a banana pandemic that has been threatening the multi-billion-dollar banana industry worldwide. The disease is caused by a fungus that spreads rapidly throughout the soil and into the roots of banana plants. Currently, the only way to stop the spread of this disease is for farmers to manually inspect and remove infected plants as quickly as possible, which is a time-consuming process. The main purpose of this study is to build a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) using a transfer learning approach to rapidly identify Fusarium wilt infections on banana crop leaves. We chose to use the ResNet50 architecture as the base CNN model for our transfer learning approach owing to its remarkable performance in image classification, which was demonstrated through its victory in the ImageNet competition. After its initial training and fine-tuning on a data set consisting of 600 healthy and diseased images, the CNN model achieved near-perfect accuracy of 0.99 along with a loss of 0.46 and was fine-tuned to adapt the ResNet base model. ResNet50’s distinctive residual block structure could be the reason behind these results. To evaluate this CNN model, 500 test images, consisting of 250 diseased and healthy banana leaf images, were classified by the model. The deep CNN model was able to achieve an accuracy of 0.98 and an F-1 score of 0.98 by correctly identifying the class of 492 of the 500 images. These results show that this DCNN model outperforms existing models such as Sangeetha et al., 2023’s deep CNN model by at least 0.07 in accuracy and is a viable option for identifying Fusarium Wilt in banana crops. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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15 pages, 2049 KiB  
Article
A Convolutional Neural Network Algorithm for Pest Detection Using GoogleNet
by Intan Nurma Yulita, Muhamad Farid Ridho Rambe, Asep Sholahuddin and Anton Satria Prabuwono
AgriEngineering 2023, 5(4), 2366-2380; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5040145 - 08 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1576
Abstract
The primary strategy for mitigating lost productivity entails promptly, accurately, and efficiently detecting plant pests. Although detection by humans can be useful in detecting certain pests, it is often slower compared to automated methods, such as machine learning. Hence, this study employs a [...] Read more.
The primary strategy for mitigating lost productivity entails promptly, accurately, and efficiently detecting plant pests. Although detection by humans can be useful in detecting certain pests, it is often slower compared to automated methods, such as machine learning. Hence, this study employs a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, specifically GoogleNet, to detect pests within mobile applications. The technique of detection involves the input of images depicting plant pests, which are subsequently subjected to further processing. This study employed many experimental methods to determine the most effective model. The model exhibiting a 93.78% accuracy stands out as the most superior model within the scope of this investigation. The aforementioned model has been included in a smartphone application with the purpose of facilitating Indonesian farmers in the identification of pests affecting their crops. The implementation of an Indonesian language application is a contribution to this research. Using this local language makes it easier for Indonesian farmers to use it. The potential impact of this application on Indonesian farmers is anticipated to be significant. By enhancing pest identification capabilities, farmers may employ more suitable pest management strategies, leading to improved crop yields in the long run. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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14 pages, 2254 KiB  
Article
Artificial Neural Networks for Modeling and Optimizing Egg Cost in Second-Cycle Laying Hens Based on Dietary Intakes of Essential Amino Acids
by Walter Morales-Suárez, Luis Daniel Daza and Henry A. Váquiro
AgriEngineering 2023, 5(4), 1832-1845; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering5040112 - 12 Oct 2023
Viewed by 865
Abstract
Egg production is a significant source of animal protein for human consumption. Feed costs significantly impact the profitability of egg production, representing more than 70% of the variable costs. This study evaluated the effect of dietary intakes of three essential amino acids (EAAs) [...] Read more.
Egg production is a significant source of animal protein for human consumption. Feed costs significantly impact the profitability of egg production, representing more than 70% of the variable costs. This study evaluated the effect of dietary intakes of three essential amino acids (EAAs) on the egg cost for H&N Brown second-cycle laying hens. The hens were fed for 20 weeks with 23 diets that varied in their lysine, methionine + cystine, and threonine contents. These amino acids were derived from both dietary and synthetic sources. Zootechnical results were used to calculate the feed cost per kilogram of egg (FCK), considering the cost of raw materials and the diet composition. Multivariate polynomial models and artificial neural networks (ANNs) were validated to predict FCK as a function of the EAAs and time. The EAA intakes that minimize FCK over time were optimized using the best model, a cascade-forward ANN with a softmax transfer function. The optimal scenario for FCK (0.873 USD/kg egg) at 20 weeks was achieved at 943.7 mg lysine/hen-day, 858.3 mg methionine + cystine/hen-day, and 876.8 mg threonine/hen-day. ANNs could be a valuable tool for predicting the egg cost of laying hens based on the nutritional requirements. This could help improve economic efficiency and reduce the feed costs in poultry companies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Artificial Neural Network in Agriculture)
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