A low-cost "plant-scanner" platform for automated detection of Ustilago maydis infection in maize using deep learning

Ustilago maydis is a biotrophic fungus that causes smut disease in maize, leading to tumor formation on aerial parts of the plant. While U. maydis has been a model for plant-fungal interaction studies, no tool has existed to automatically quantify infection symptoms under laboratory conditions for deep learning analysis. To address this, we developed a rotating camera system that captures videos of plants under customized lighting and shutter settings. These videos were used to train machine learning models to distinguish between healthy and infected plants. Two detection approaches have been presented. In the first approach, by employing a naive masking technique and combining classical machine learning classifiers utilizing handcrafted features, the model achieved a reasonable performance, with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of maximum 0.90 on the Receiver Operating Characteristic in one of the classifiers, showing relatively high sensitivity and specificity. The second approach utilizes pre-trained YOLO11 model for object detection and further classification. The YOLO11-based approach outperforms traditional methods, achieving near-perfect validation accuracy (AUC: 0.99-1.00), demonstrating its superiority for real-time, scalable applications. Our toolset, featuring a cost-efficient and customizable scanning platform with open building-blocks design, provides a valuable resource as a proof-of-concept for unbiased disease symptom detection and scoring, with potential applications in other plant pathology studies. This point enables easy replication and adaptation by other research laboratories which makes the platform robust, scalable and practical beyond our specific application.