IDENTIFICATION OF RUBBER LEAF DISEASES BASED ON NEURAL

NETWORK CONCEPT
SHWETHA S R
M.Tech(DECS) Student Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering
VCET Puttur D.K, Karnataka, India 574203

Dr. SHIVAPRAKASH KOLIWAD

Professor, Research coordinator Dept. of Puttur and Communication Engineering
VCET Puttur D.K, Karnataka, India 574203

Prof. SRIKRISHNA SHASTRI C

Associative Professor Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
VCET Puttur D.K, Karnataka, India 574203

JAYANTH J
Research Scholars, VCET Putter D. K, Karnataka, India 574203

ABSTRACT: India is an agricultural country and rubber is used extensively in many applications.
Enormous rubber yield is lost due to different diseases. To increase the output from the rubber
industry efficiently early detection of disease is an important criterion. This paper concentrates on
the identification of diseases in rubber leaves and classifies them. The yield of a good rubber tree
is expected to be more if it is disease free. An attempt has been made to identify different types of
diseases that are present in a rubber leaf. Identifying them at an earlier stage will increase the
rubber yield and corrective measures can be conveyed to the rubber grower. Basically the rubber
tree leaves show similarity with each other and the number of leaves are joining at their base. The
features of leaf are changed when they are affected by the disease. New techniques such as neural
network with back propagation algorithm are used for identification and classification. The
existence of the disease in a rubber tree is seasonal and it varies from region to region. Such
variables are also included for robust classification.

KEYWORDS: Back propagation, neural networks, Rubber leaf diseases, Image acquisition,
Image processing, classification.

INTRODUCTION

India is an agricultural country and 70% of the population depends on agriculture. Rubber trees are
one of the earths greatest natural resources. Malaysia has the significantly large rubber plantation
areas in Asia. The rubber is a very important tropical industrial crop in India. Rubber is an
economic crop whose healthy existence is significant to its productivity output. The first rubber
plantation in India was started in 1895 in Kerala. Natural rubber, also called India rubber or
caoutchouc, as initially produced, consists of suitable polymers of the dis-isoprene, with minor
impurities of other organic compounds plus water. Natural rubber (NR) is one of the most
important commercial plantation crops of India providing the raw material input for the fast
growing domestic rubber goods manufacturing industry. Natural rubber being an industrial raw
material, its consumption increases with growth in industrial activity and economic growth of the
country. India is one country that produces almost enough NR to meet its entire industrial
requirement. Natural rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), also known as the Para rubber tree, is a quick
growing, fairly sturdy, perennial tree of a height of 25 to 30 m. It belongs to the family
Euphorbiaceae and the most economically important member of the genus Hevea. Natural rubber
(NR) produced from latex of the rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis, almost the sole source of natural
rubber production.

Sufficient production of natural rubber through improved management in the rubber plantation is
threatened by some diseases. The first disease was 1900 and since then more than 100 maladies
have been reported worldwide. The types of diseases and quantity of diseases depends on various
environmental parameters like temperature, rain fall etc. If any of diseases occurs, then the rubber
grower will have the knowledge of diseases and controls the situation. The incorrect control
measure of the diseases causes the soil fertility and also decreases rubber production. Several
methods are implemented to identify the different diseases in rubber tree leaves. This paper
concentrates to identify the diseases using the features of rubber leaves from its image. For
classification, application of back propagation algorithm in neural network is used.

LITURATURE SURVEY

To carry out the work and implementation, an exhaustive literature survey is necessary. The
survey provides input for carrying out the work. It also helps to overcome the problems while
implementing the work.

Gaurav Kandalkar, A. V. Deorankar, P. N. Chatur presents the classification of agriculture pests.

The pests feature is stored in data base with the name of the pests. The pests image is captured
from various crops. The captured image is to be extracted available in foreground and image
foreground is separated. For this, the saliency mapped image segmentation techniques are used.
The segmentation is used to separate the different regions with significance in the image. The
energy of an image as a feature vector is calculated using discrete wavelet transform (DWT). With
the help of back propagation neural network, they identify the types of pests which are present in
an image.

Hadzli Hashim, Noor Abdullah, Sulaiman discusses the application of the ANN in rubber tree leaf
diseases using RGB color model. The method focused on developing ANN model system of color
image information of three rubber leaf diseases. Here, the captured color image is processed by
region of interest and using differential method the infected area is subtracted. The detected color
components are classified by developing the ANN model system.

Savitha N. Ghaiwat, Parul Arora discusses different classification techniques that can be used for
plant leaf disease classification. A classification technique deals with classifying each pattern in
one of the distinct classes. There are so many classification techniques, such as k-Nearest
Neighbour Classifier, Probabilistic Neural Network, Genetic Algorithm, Support Vector Machine,
and Principal Component Analysis, Artificial neural network, Fuzzy logic. In this method the
system composed of three main parts:

Hj.Kamaruzaman Jusoff, Hj. Malek Mohd Yusoff, Nurul Hidayah Mohd Ali proposes a method of
detecting tree stress caused by diseases or pest infestations that includes the analysis of
spectroradiometry. The system is to develop the spectral library of individual diseased rubber

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trees, using a ground-based handheld field spectroradiometer. The specific objective is to identify
the spectral signature characteristics of healthy and unhealthy or stressed rubber trees due to leaf
diseases. The spectral reflectance of each infected rubber tree is separated according to the
different wavelength and present reflectance. The spectral reflectance of leaf diseases can be
separated at the near infrared range region. The reflectance of the infected leaves sample is
measured by using spectrometer.

Noor Ezan Abdullah, Athirah A. Rahim, Hadzli Hashim and Mahanijah Md Kamal explain several
rubber tree leaf diseases that have been studied for digital RGB colour extraction. The identified
regions of interest (ROI) of the images of diseases are then processed to quantify the normalized
indices from the RGB colour distribution. This involved the process of image classification by
using artificial neural network.

Xudong Jiang proposes a fast algorithm to construct feed forward neural networks for pattern
classification tasks. The algorithm constructs the neural network by adding elementary neural
elements to the first layer, in response to the distribution of the patterns in the training set. Each
elementary neural element of the network is trained with different pattern subsets and it forms a
hyper-plane in the input space. The decision regions of these elementary neural elements are
restricted and combined through the second layer of simple fixed weights. This network performs
the nonlinear map of the input and the output and realizes a piecewise linear classifier.

DISEASES IN RUBBER LEAVES

The rubber tree may live for a hundred years or even more. But its economic life period in
plantations, only around 7 years of immature phase and 25 years of productive phase .But if it is
affected by diseases then production rate drastically reduces. Severe incidence of diseases may
lead trees to die. Diseases in rubber plants are season bound.

a.Powdery Mildew b. Corynespora c. Birds eye spot d. Colltotrichum

Figure1: types of rubber tree leaf diseass

Powdery Mildew (Oidium heveae)

Predominantly noticed on newly formed tender flush during the re-foliation period of January to
March. Cloudy days with light rains and/or misty nights with dew formation during re-foliation
favor serious disease outbreaks. Tender leaves with ashy coating curl, crinkle, and edges roll
inwards and fall, leaving the petioles attached to the twigs like a broom-stick. After a few days,
the petioles also fall. Die-back of twigs follows. On older leaves white patches later causing
necrotic spots reduce photosynthetic efficiency. Infected flowers and tender fruits are shed,
affecting seed production.

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Corynespora
The disease (caused by thefungus Corynespora cassiicola) is more severe during re-foliation. It
affects leaves of all stages young leaves in the light green stage appear to be the most susceptible.
Symptoms vary with the clones and locality. Circular lesions of varying sizes with papery centre,
brown margin and a yellow halo is the common symptom. The central region of the lesions may
disintegrate leaving holes. Usually several lesions join together and form a large blighted area.
The disease spreads on the leaf veins, turning them dark brown. The leaf tissues surrounding
infected veins turn yellow and later to brown, and then the leaf falls off. Trees on the border of the
plantations and branches exposed to sunlight are more severely affected. Severe incidence leads to
shoot dieback. The new flushes formed after one round of defoliation may be affected again.
Such repeat infections and defoliation cause drying up of affected trees.

Bird's Eye Spot

A hot weather disease, serious and damaging in the nursery. Weaker plants and plants growing
under exposed situations are more susceptible. Symptoms appear as small necrotic spots with
dark/brown margins and pale centre. Severe infection leads to premature defoliation and die back.

Colletotrichum
Observed during April to December, In North East India. The disease is prevalent throughout the
year except during winter. Symptoms appears as infects tender leaves, mostly at the leaf tip region,
spots are small, brown in colour and are surrounded by a yellow hallo. Numerous spots coalesce
and dry up leading to defoliation. The infected leaves often crinkle and become distorted before
shedding.

PROPOSED METHOD

In the proposed method neural network back propagation algorithm is implemented in MATLAB.
A neural-network structure as a collection of parallel processors connected together in the form of
a directed graph and is organized such that the network structure lends itself to the problem being
considered.

Back propagation network (BPN) operation

Figure2 represents architecture of a simple Neural Network. It is made up from an input, output
and one or more hidden layers.

Figure2: simple back propagation neural network

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During the training phase, the training data is fed into to the input layer. The data is propagated to
the hidden layer and then to the output layer. This is called the forward pass of the back
propagation algorithm. In forward pass, each node in hidden layer gets input from all the nodes
from input layer, which are multiplied with appropriate weights and then summed. Similarly each
node in output layer gets input from all the nodes from hidden layer, which are multiplied with
appropriate weights and then summed. The output of both hidden and output node is the non-linear
transformation of the resulting sum. The output values of the output layer are compared with the
target output values. The error between actual output values and target output values is calculated
and propagated back toward hidden layer. This is called the backward pass of the back
propagation algorithm. The error is used to update the connection strengths between nodes, i.e.
weight matrices between input-hidden layers and hidden-output layers are updated. During the
testing phase, no learning takes place i.e., weight matrices are not changed. Each test vector is fed
into the input layer.

After an input pattern has been applied as a stimulus to the first layer of network units, it is
propagated through each upper layer until an output is generated. This output pattern is then
compared to the desired output, and an error signal is computed for each output. The error signals
are then transmitted backward from the output layer to each node in the intermediate layer that
contributes directly to the output. This process repeats, layer by layer, until each node in the
network has received an error signal that describes its relative contribution to the total error. Based
on the error signal received, connection weights are then updated by each unit. The algorithm is
stopped when the value of the error function has become sufficiently small.

Basic Block diagram

In this system, a reference model is built for each disease by performing feature extraction and
next the test input is compared with each model. Figure3 shows the block diagram of proposed
method

Image acquisition: Image acquisition in image processing can be broadly defined as the action of
retrieving an image from some source, usually a hardware-based source, so it can be passed
through whatever processes need to occur afterward.

Image Feature Data base

acquisition extraction

Query Feature Classification

image extraction

Identification
of disease

Figure3: block diagram of proposed method

Feature extraction: In image processing, feature extraction is a special form of reduction. The
feature is defined as a function of one or more measurements, each of which specifies some
quantifiable property of an object, and is computed such that it quantifies some significant

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characteristics of the object. When the input data to an algorithm is too large to be processed and it
is suspected to be notoriously redundant then the input data will be transformed into a reduced
representation set of features. Transforming the input data into the set of features is called feature
extraction

Data base: When a test image is received, their features are extracted too and compared with those
stored in the data base. When a match is found we confirm the disease. Accordingly the output is
displayed showing the details of the disease and solution for the same.

RESULTS

Table1: Mean values of leaf images

Name of the Disease Mean value Performance Value
Corynespora 163.81 7.9666e-008
Powdery Mildew 73.63 4.7171e-008
Colletrotrichum 38.15 6.3999e-008
Birds Eye Spot 81.68 7.8672e-008
Healthy leaves 17.96 5.9369e-008

To implement the work mean value of different leaf images are calculated. The mean value is the
threshold values for further process. These threshold values are taken as the input to the neural
network. For classification back propagation algorithm is used. Table1 shows the mean value of
different disease and performance value.

CONCLUSION

This paper concentrates on the identification of rubber leaf diseases. Monitoring the different
disease and apply correct action for that is very important. The different types of diseases occur
according to the various environmental condition and also different seasons. The methodology
uses feature extraction for disease detection. For neural network classification these features are
served as inputs.

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