Abstract

Agriculture not only supplies food but is also a source of income for a vast population of the world. Paddy plants usually produce a brown-coloured husk on the top and their seed, after de-husking and processing, yields edible rice which is a major cereal food crop and staple food, and therefore, becomes the cornerstone of the food security for half the world’s people. However, with the increase in climate change and global warming, the quality and its production are highly degradedby the common diseases posed in rice plants due to bacteria and fungi (such as sheath rot, leaf blast,leaf smut, brown spot, and bacterial blight).

The efficiency of the two most popular object detection algorithms (YOLOv3 tiny and YOLOv4 tiny) for smartphone applications was analysed for the detection of three diseases—brown spot, leaf blast, and hispa.