Rice blast (Magnaporthe oryzae) occurrence prediction and the key factor sensitivity analysis by machine learning

Abstract

This study aimed to establish a machine learning (ML)-based rice blast predicting model to decrease the appreciable losses based on short-term environment data. The average, highest and lowest air temperature, average relative humidity, soil temperature and solar energy were selected for model development. The developed multilayer perceptron (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), Elman recurrent neural network (Elman RNN) and probabilistic neural network (PNN) were evaluated by F-measures. Finally, a sensitivity analysis (SA) was conducted for the factor importance assessment. The study result shows that the PNN performed best with the F-measure (β = 2) of 96.8%. The SA was conducted in the PNN model resulting in the main effect period is 10 days before the rice blast happened. The key factors found are minimum air temperature, followed by solar energy and equaled sensitivity of average relative humidity, maximum air temperature and soil temperature. The temperature phase lag in air and soil may cause a lower dew point and suitable for rice blast pathogens growth. Through this study’s results, rice blast warnings can be issued 10 days in advance, increasing the response time for farmers preparing related preventive measures, further reducing the losses caused by rice blast.