# Dynamic Meta-Ensemble Framework for Efficient and Accurate Deep Learning in Plant Leaf Disease Detection on Resource-Constrained Edge Devices

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.17290 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.17290/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Xception: Deep Learning with Depthwise Separable Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02357/) (2016)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07012/) (2017)
- [SqueezeNet: AlexNet-level accuracy with 50x fewer parameters and <0.5MB model size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07360/) (2016)
- [ECA-Net: Efficient Channel Attention for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03151/) (2019)
- [Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03169/) (2016)
- [Comparative Analysis of Lightweight CNNs for Resource-Constrained Devices: Predictive Performance, Efficiency Trade-offs, and Initialization Effects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03303/) (2025)
- [Low-Cost Self-Ensembles Based on Multi-Branch Transformation and Grouped Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02307/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deploying deep learning models for plant disease detection on edge devices such as IoT sensors, smartphones, and embedded systems is severely constrained by limited computational resources and energy budgets. To address this challenge, we introduce a novel Dynamic Meta-Ensemble Framework (DMEF) for high-accuracy plant disease diagnosis under resource constraints. DMEF employs an adaptive weighting mechanism that dynamically combines the predictions of three lightweight convolutional neural networks (MobileNetV2, NASNetMobile, and InceptionV3) by optimizing a trade-off between accuracy improvements (DeltaAcc) and computational efficiency (model size). During training, the ensemble weights are updated iteratively, favoring models exhibiting high performance and low complexity. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets for potato and maize diseases demonstrate state-of-the-art classification accuracies of 99.53% and 96.61%, respectively, surpassing standalone models and static ensembles by 2.1% and 6.3%. With computationally efficient inference latency (<75ms) and a compact footprint (<1 million parameters), DMEF shows strong potential for edge-based agricultural monitoring, suggesting viability for scalable crop disease management. This bridges the gap between high-accuracy AI and practical field applications.