Machine learning classification techniques for smart agriculture: a review of disease detection and crop recommendation
Abstract
The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML) in agriculture presents a revolutionary step toward efficient agricultural practices using data to address global issues surrounding food security. This review conducted a systematic search of the Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink databases for articles published between January 2023 and January 2026. It used keyword combinations like “IoT and machine learning and agriculture”, “crop recommendation”, “plant disease detection”, and “precision farming”. From the initial pool of articles found, 30 articles met the criteria for empirical methodology, quantitative performance reporting, and clear dataset descriptions. These were chosen for detailed analysis. It was discovered that the ensemble, as well as the traditional machine learning methods, such as Random Forest, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Decision Trees, produce highly accurate predictions of the crop yields with an accuracy of 99.9%. Meanwhile, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and ResNet-based deep learning models detect diseases with an accuracy above 98% while Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) and Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) time-series models provide forecasts of weather conditions with an accuracy ranging from 94 to 98%, due to the complex nature of the environment dynamics. The application of IoT systems for precision agriculture produced a significant improvement in terms of resource utilization, resulting in 60–96% of water savings, 25% increased yield, and 36–38% reduced herbicide use. Although these advancements have been made, wider application is still hindered by high costs of implementation, lack of technological skills among farmers, data privacy concerns, issues of scalability within different agricultural settings, and consistent internet connection in rural areas. The current paper evaluates the use of IoT and ML in the agriculture sector from diverse data sources and studies to reveal the immense benefits offered by the two systems in enhancing farming activities.