Enhancing Cocoa Pod Disease Classification via Transfer Learning and Ensemble Methods: Toward Robust Predictive Modeling

Abstract: This study presents an ensemble-based approach for cocoa pod disease classification by integrating transfer learning with three ensemble learning strategies: Bagging, Boosting, and Stacking. Pre-trained convolutional neural networks, including VGG16, VGG19, ResNet50, ResNet101, InceptionV3, and Xception, were fine-tuned and employed as base learners to detect three disease categories: Black Pod Rot, Pod Borer, and Healthy. A balanced dataset of 6,000 cocoa pod images was curated and augmented to ensure robustness against variations in lighting, orientation, and disease severity. The performance of each ensemble method was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Experimental results show that Bagging consistently achieved superior classification performance with a test accuracy of 100%, outperforming Boosting (97%) and Stacking (92%). The findings confirm that combining transfer learning with ensemble techniques improves model generalization and reliability, making it a promising direction for precision agriculture and automated crop disease management.