Lightweight Deep Learning Approach for Sugarcane Leaf Disease Classification Using MobileNetV2

Abstract

Sugarcane is one of Indonesia’s strategic crops, yet its productivity is frequently disrupted by leaf diseases such as yellow leaf, rust, and red rot. Previous studies have shown that deep learning models are promising for plant disease detection, but many of them rely on heavy architectures that limit deployment in real-world agricultural settings. To address this gap, this study applies MobileNetV2, a lightweight Convolutional Neural Network, for the classification of sugarcane leaf diseases. Using the publicly available Kaggle dataset, the model was trained and evaluated on four classes: healthy, yellow leaf, rust, and red rot. The results demonstrate that MobileNetV2 achieved 97.0% test accuracy, with strong precision, recall, and F1-scores across all categories. These findings highlight that efficient deep learning architectures can deliver reliable disease classification while remaining practical for implementation on mobile or edge devices. Compared with previous approaches, this study contributes by demonstrating that lightweight model like MobileNetV2 can provide a balance of accuracy and efficiency, making them suitable for supporting precision agriculture practices in resource-limited environments