# Cross-Dataset Generalization of Bangladeshi Rice Leaf Disease Classifiers: Benchmark, Diagnosis, and Mitigation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31709 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31709/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 17 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Domain Adaptation by Backpropagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.7495/) (2014)
- [Domain Generalization: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02503/) (2021)
- [Revisiting Batch Normalization For Practical Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04779/) (2016)
- [Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03169/) (2016)
- [Agriculture-Vision: A Large Aerial Image Database for Agricultural Pattern Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.01306/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cross-dataset transfer in rice leaf disease classification remains a significant challenge, with models trained on one image collection performing substantially worse when deployed on another. We conduct a systematic benchmark across three Bangladeshi rice leaf disease datasets (5,419 images, 6 transfer pairs, 3 CNN backbones, 3 random seeds) to characterize and diagnose this failure. Strong augmentation recovers a mean cross-dataset macro-F1 improvement of +0.070 (Wilcoxon p < 0.001, 15 of 18 transfer pairs positive). Removing non-leaf image content via segmentation shows directional benefit (mean +0.066, p = 0.062, n = 36 paired observations) that is consistent across two independent segmentation methods but does not reach conventional significance. A self-supervised ViT control (DINOv2 linear probe) exhibits equivalent cross-dataset collapse to CNNs, ruling out architecture inductive bias as the primary driver and pointing to acquisition-condition shift. Adaptive batch normalization uniformly harms transfer performance, with harm magnitude correlating with source-target label-prior divergence and model depth (Spearman rho = 0.621, p = 0.009). Grad-CAM attribution analysis on 12 sampled predictions does not distinguish correct from incorrect cross-domain predictions (p = 0.462), indicating that common attribution proxies are insufficient for diagnosing shift at practical sample sizes. We document all frozen results, prespecified analysis criteria, and reproducibility artifacts in a public repository with SHA-256 integrity verification. This work establishes a rigorous empirical baseline for understanding cross-dataset generalization in agricultural computer vision and identifies both effective (augmentation) and ineffective (AdaBN) adaptation strategies.