Fuzzy Discretization on the Multinomial Naïve Bayes Method for Modeling Multiclass Classification of Corn Plant Diseases and Pests

As an agricultural commodity, corn functions as food, animal feed, and industrial raw material. Therefore, diseases and pests pose a major challenge to the production of corn plants. Modeling the classification of corn plant diseases and pests based on digital images is essential for developing an information technology-based early detection system. This plant’s early detection technology is beneficial for lowering farmers’ losses. The detection system based on digital images is also cost-effective. This paper aims to model the classification of corn plant diseases and pests based on digital images by implementing fuzzy discretization. Discretization is an essential technique to improve the knowledge extraction process of continuous-type data. It is also essential in some methods where continuous data must be processed or handled. Fuzzy discretization allows classes to have overlapping intervals so that they can handle information that is vague or unclear. We developed hypotheses and proved that different combinations of membership functions in fuzzy discretization affect classification performance. Empirical assessment using Monte Carlo resampling was carried out to obtain the generalizability of the performance of the best classification model of all proposed models. The best model is determined based on the number of metrics with the highest value and the highest metric on the Fscore and Kappa, a multiclass measure. The combination of digital image data preprocessing and classification methods also affects the performance of the classification model. We hope this work can provide an overview for experts in building early detection systems of corn plant diseases and pests using classification models based on fuzzy discretization.