Smallholder farmers in Tanzania are challenged on the lack of tools for early detection of banana diseases. This study aimed at developing a mobile application for early detection of Fusarium wilt race 1 and black Sigatoka banana diseases using deep learning. We used a dataset of 3000 banana leaves images. We pre-trained our model on Resnet152 and Inceptionv3 Convolution Neural Network architectures. The Resnet152 achieved an accuracy of 99.2% and Inceptionv3 an accuracy of 95.41%. On deployment using Android mobile phones, we chose Inceptionv3 since it has lower memory requirements compared to Resnet152. The mobile application on real environment detected the two diseases with a confidence level of 99% of the captured leaf area. This result indicates the potential in improving the yield of bananas by smallholder farmers using a tool for early detection of diseases.
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