Systematic Review of Plant Pest and Disease Identification Strategies and Techniques in Mobile Apps

摘要

Identifying plant diseases has been mainstay in any farming and agricultural activity since time immemorial. The most common method has been visually assessing the plants by experts to identify the diseases of the plants and recommending pesticides and chemicals which can be used to treat diseases in plants. Technologies like mobile apps have brought about advancements to this traditional method of identifying and addressing plant diseases. Although there are now a plethora of mobile apps aiding farmers with addressing the issue of plant diseases, there is a scarcity of studies that explore the strategies that are being employed by these apps. This paper identifies the strategies that are being used by mobile apps in plant disease identification to set a foundation for further studies with regards to this field. This is performed through analyzing mobile apps on both Google Play Store and Apple Store, through the description given by the developers and the use of the installed apps to determine the content offered and how it aids farmers in identifying curbing plant diseases. The findings using the inclusion and exclusion criteria that was set showed that overall, they are a few mobile apps in plant pest and disease identification with 152 apps only examined. The database strategy was identified as the most used strategy by developers with 78 mobile apps and the AI Diagnostics was the second most used strategy with 26 mobile apps from both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store combined.