A Hybrid Machine Learning Approach for Detecting and Assessing <i>Zyginidia pullula</i> Damage in Maize Leaves

Featured Application The proposed framework enhances precision agriculture and sustainable farming by enabling early pest detection and crop health monitoring. By integrating deep learning and handcrafted features, it provides a robust tool for assessing pest-induced damage in maize plants. The method is adaptable to other crops and pest species, offering broad applicability in smart farming.Abstract This study presents a novel approach for the detection and severity assessment of pest-induced damage in maize plants, focusing on the Zyginidia pullula pest. A newly developed dataset is utilized, where maize plant images are initially classified into two primary categories: healthy and infected. Subsequently, infected samples are categorized into three distinct severity levels: low, medium, and high. Both traditional and deep learning-based feature extraction techniques are employed to achieve this. Specifically, hand-crafted feature extraction methods, including Gabor filters, Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix, and Hue-Saturation-Value color space, are combined with CNN-based models such as ResNet-50, DenseNet-201, and EfficientNet-B2. The maize images undergo preprocessing and segmentation using Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization and U2Net, respectively. Extracted features are then fused and subjected to Principal Component Analysis for dimensionality reduction. The classification task is performed using Support Vector Machines, Random Forest, and Artificial Neural Networks, ensuring robust and accurate detection. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid approach outperforms individual feature extraction methods, achieving a classification accuracy of up to 92.55%. Furthermore, integrating multiple feature representations significantly enhances the model's ability to differentiate between varying levels of pest damage. Unlike previous studies that primarily focus on plant disease detection, this research uniquely addresses the quantification of pest-induced damage, offering a valuable tool for precision agriculture. The findings of this study contribute to the development of automated, scalable, and efficient pest monitoring systems, which are crucial for minimizing yield losses and improving agricultural sustainability.