2021 IEEE Mysore Sub Section International Conference (MysuruCon)

Detection of Disease in Bombyx Mori Silkworm by

using Image Analysis Approach
Santosh M Nagashetti
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
tapassantoshmn@gmail.com
Sharanagouda Biradar
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
sharanubiradar66@gmail.com
Srinidhi D Dambal
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Ramaiah Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
nidhidambal@gmail.com

C.G. Raghavendra SMIEEE Parameshachari B D SMIEEE

2021 IEEE Mysore Sub Section International Conference (MysuruCon) | 978-1-6654-3888-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/MYSURUCON52639.2021.9641676

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of Telecommunication Engineering

Ramaiah Institute of Technology GSSS Institute of Engineering and Technology for Women,
Bangalore, India Mysuru, India
cgraagu@msrit.edu paramesh@gsss.edu.in

Abstract — Technology is making remarkable changes in
almost every aspects of life. Many branches of agriculture are
making use of trending technical invention, yet sericulture is a
way behind at implementing these developments. Though
many approaches are developed for detection of diseased eggs
and moths, detection of diseases in silkworm at an earlier stage
is a laborious process. Identification and detection of diseases
at an earlier stage would be helpful for a farmer to take
essential precaution to avoid spreading of diseases. In this
research work image classifying and deep learning model are
used to identify the silkworm disease. Using various sets of
network layers in deep neural network, a machine has been
trained to classify healthy silkworm and unhealthy silkworm
which has resulted in promising accuracy rate. Tensorflow
platform has been used to create layers and train the machine.
Keywords— Bombyx Mori silkworm, Deep neural networks,
Image classification, Sericulture, Silkworm diseases,
TensorFlow.
I. INTRODUCTION
Silk is one of the major textile products that has larger
demand all over the world. Its versatile affinity for dyes,
light weight and high durability made it popular as “Queen
of textiles”. Besides the raw silk production sericulture has
variety of by-products that makes sericulture as a profitable
practice [1]. Silkworm rearing has led to livelihood of a large
community making millions of employment opportunities.
Sericulture is one of the major contributors to country’s
economy that mainly focuses on creating employment
opportunities in rural areas. It also helps in women
empowerment by providing opportunities for women to work
[2]. This would really help in nations like India. India is the
second largest country to produce silk after china. In India it
creates around 8.25 million job opportunities per year. An
average of 8200 metric tonnes of raw silk is produced in
India every year, which makes it as the profitable industry.
Having thousands of families practicing sericulture in the
rural areas of Ramanagara, Chikkaballapura and Mysore
districts. Karnataka stands first in producing silk in India [3].
Mulberry, Tasar, Eri, Muga are different types of silk.
Mulberry is the vastly reared silkworm in India. Each cocoon
gives around 300-900 meters of 10 micrometer of raw silk.
This makes each cocoon valuable to farmer to get profit.
Silkworms are the most sensitive creatures to rear. Those are
nurtured in a controlled environment and fed with the healthy
mulberry leaves. Yet there are many ways by which the
worms are infected. The diseases may occur due to lack of
nutritious food, feeding diseased leaves and diseased eggs
[4]. Once the worms are infected, it damages around 30-40%
of the yield which pushes farmers into crisis. Hence
detection of disease is the prominent process to lower loss in
the yield. Presently, biological methods are followed to
identify the various types of disease by adopting microscopic
approach [5]. These methods need skilled persons and also it
consumes more time to identify the disease. Though
technology is evolving in every aspects of agriculture, yet
sericulture is lagging behind in it. Presently image
processing, deep neural network, machine learning and IoT
are the trending technologies that would bring the
revolutionary changes in the field of sericulture [6,7]. In this
research work, deep learning methods are applied to identify
the silkworm disease. This method will reduce the time
required to identify, skilled people and also will avoid human
intervention since it is a non-invasive approach. By using
signal processing methods detecting the disease in an earlier
stages helps farmer to avoid loss in their yield by taking
necessary actions to prevent spreading of diseases.
II. RELATED WORK
There is an increasing need to concentrate on healthy
production of silkworm, in order to meet the increase in
demand of textile industry. In the literature [8], a technique
to identify the disease in corn, based on convolutional neural
network is projected. In [9], author deals with identification
of various eye diseases such as diabetic Retinopathy and
Glaucoma, these are severe diseases which tends to occur in
diabetic patients, failure to identify them at the earliest would
lead to permanent damage to the eye sight, the model uses
deep neural network to identify these diseases and results
were 80% accurate. Coulibalya et al [10], proposed an
approach, which is based on transfer learning along with
feature extraction, the model developed will identify the
mildew disease in pearl plant millet, thus results obtained are
95% accurate. In [11], mentioned about the identification of

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 diseases in terrestrial plants using deep learning neural
network, model built with this is capable of identifying the
diseases in plants at certain accuracy. In the literature [12],
discussed about the application of image processing
technique along with deep neural network to identify the
different varieties of flowers using Tensor flow framework is
mentioned. In the article [13] proposes a technique to
identify the disease in plant with a set of leaf images. This
approach is refined based on the concept of deep
convolutional autoencoder method. In the paper [14] deals
with a process for the easy classification or identification of
pathological disease in plant species through web
application. All the above cited literatures made an attempt
to identify the disease either on plants, leafs or fruits
separately. However, In the article [15], the authors have
proposed a model to identify the diseases in silkworm using
AC-Dense Net and convolution neural network and obtained
the recognition rate of 85.6%, but addressing the problem is
limited to white muscardine disease. The present proposed
work is focused on identifying the grasserie disease in
Bombyx Mori silkworm using digital image analysis
approach.
validation data samples are used for training which helps the
classifier to get the better results by validating if the output
obtained is more accurate.
For creating neural networks layers Tensorflow is used. It is
an open source from Google. This tool is mainly used for
image classification, creation and prediction. This is the
platform used to train the model with the test datasets. Deep
learning is one of the trending technologies that are being
used presently. The deep learning model is shown in figure
2. Most unique advantages of the deep learning are feature
extraction from the images. Unlikely to the machine learning
it doesn’t require manually mentioning the filters that extract
the features. In deep learning it is required to just mention
the number of filters and the layers used. The rest of the
feature extracting process will be taken care by the machine
itself.

III. METHODOLOGY
Presently the detection of the disease is done by tracing
the initial inoculum in the body of worm. The loop-mediated
isothermal amplification (LAMP) combined with lateral flow
dipstick (LFD), viral DNA transfection and DNA
hybridization are the techniques to detect BmNPV
(Grasserie). Most of the techniques use microscopes which
make them complicated and costlier, which is not affordable
by farmers. Hence a method has to be developed to identify
the disease. Here a model is proposed which uses tensorflow
framework and deep neural approach to identify the diseases. Fig 2. Deep learning method
The projected model is shown in figure 1.
Feature extraction is one of the important process. This
process is done by machine completely. Programmer has to
mention only the number of filters used. Layers contain
neurons those are connected to next layer. As shown in
figure 3, there will be input layer and other hidden layers.
Every image feature ‘x’ has some weight ‘w’ assigned to it.
While transferring the information to the next layer, feature
of image ‘x’ and weights ‘w’ are multiplied, later this result
will be sent to the next neuron. There it sums the input values
and add a bias to it. Adding bias helps in generalizing the
model.
Fig 1. Proposed methodology

To conduct the experiment test data samples are needed.

These test image samples were collected from the sericulture
farmers of bramanipura village of channapatna taluk. These
test samples are used to train the model. It takes around 85%
of the samples and then it creates more data samples by using
image data generator. Training the model would take place
through two classes of images. One is healthy silkworm
images and the other is unhealthy silkworm images. The
model is trained by many epochs so that each feature is
extracted and machine is well trained. Image data generator
are employed in this model. This tool is developed by Keras.
From this tool several data samples can be obtained by
taking a few input data samples. By using the train data
samples, it requires more data samples to train the machine
making it more efficient. Nearly 15% of data samples are Fig. 3. Two neuron layer
used for testing. These are the images that are not trained,
and same images are used as input to get the results. Further

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 By computing the dot product between vector ‘x’ and ‘w’, a
new vector Z is obtained.

(1)

The prediction function ‘h’ is attained by applying ‘Relu’

activation function represented by ‘σ’ as stated in equation
(1).
In the model three convolution, max-pooling layer and two
fully connected layers are utilized to get the better results.
Convolution and max-pooling layer are the layers in which
images are processed by convoluting them with the feature Fig 4. Results obtained when healthy silkworm image is given as input
extraction filters. In the experiment three layers with ‘relu’ Figure 4 represents the results obtained when the healthy
as an activation function were used. Flattening process were silkworm images are given as inputs. It can be observed that
performed to make the layer ready to connect. This converts image classifier machine is predicting the results correctly
the 3D layer into 2D layer to connect with the dense layer. with the prediction of around 80% of accuracy.
Dropout is a method used to increase the accuracy of the
model to decrease the effect of over fitting model. It is a
process of randomly setting up the value of nodes to zero in
each epoch. This process sets up different values to nodes
which makes the model to update the value of nodes in each
epoch. One epoch means training the model with all the
training data sets for exactly once. Each epoch consists of a
forward propagation and a backward propagation. Each
epoch consists of batches of data samples that are sent to
train the model. In the experiment 50 epochs were used to
train the model.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The proposed system has been examined by considering
several images of the silkworm. For conducting experiment
healthy, pre-Grasserie and post-Grasserie image cases were
considered. The accuracy result obtained is about 96%. As
mentioned earlier Tensorflow platform is used to train the
model and obtained the satisfying results. After testing in
software, a hardware model has to be designed so that it
works in the real time also. Raspberry pi can be used for real
time processing. Raspberry pi is a cost effective tiny
computer which works on Raspbian OS. This device has
inbuilt RAM, external microSD card which can be used to
store operating system and program memory. Fig 5. Results obtained when infected silkworm image is given as input

Similarly figure 5, shows the result obtained when infected

silkworm image is given as inputs. It can be noticed that the
model is able to predict the result correctly with 96% of
accuracy. Accuracy per epoch is the percentage of the
classification made by the model which is correct during the
training.

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Fig 6. Graph of accuracy per epoch
From the figure 6 it can be observed that, the epochs
increase the accuracy increases number of times you train
the model, the model would be more efficient to get the
results as expected. From figure 6 it can be observed that,
increase in epochs will lead to increase in accuracy with the
number of times model is trained. The model would be more
efficient to get the better results. Accuracy per class shows
the accuracy of the model to predict the images correctly of
which class it belongs. Table 1 shows the accuracy per class
of the model.
Table 1: Accuracy in each class
Sl. Class Accuracy Samples
No.
1. Healthy silkworm 0.97
2. Grasserie silkworm 0.99
Fig 7. Output obtained when infected silkworm image is given as input
When an image of diseased silkworm is given as an input,
prediction made by the machine is ambiguous which can be
observed from figure 7. This might happen due to reasons
that there may be several features that are common in both
the classes. Hence machine predicts the image incorrectly.
This state of the machine is called confused state. Though it
gave an ambigous result the model considers it as the
diseased worm, because of the percentage of characteristics
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match with unhealthy class more than 50%. The confusion
matrix gives an idea about the prediction of the model. The
vertical axis represents the classes into which the dataset is
divided. In the experiment dataset are divided into healthy
silkworm and Grasserie silkworm as shown in figure 8. The
horizontal axis represents the prediction of the hardware
model. In the test 66 healthy silkworm images and 77
grasserie silkworm images were considered. Among 66
healthy silkworm images 64 images are predicted as healthy
and 2 images are predicted as grasserie. Among 77 grasserie
silkworm images 76 images are predicted as grasserie and 1
image is predicted as healthy. So 2 images of healthy
silkworm contain the characteristics of grasserie silkworm
and 1 image of grasseire silkworm contains the
characteristics of healthy silkworm and the machine is in
confusion state for these images. Hence the prediction is not
accurate.
66 Fig 8. Confusion matrix
77
The proposed system has been examined by considering
several images of the silkworm. For conducting experiment
healthy and Grasserie image cases were considered. Table 2
shows the accuracy for various trails of the model.
Table 2: Accuracy for various trails
Sl. Particulars Trail-1 Trail-2 Trail-3
No.
1 Number of cycles 3 5 7
2 Number of images 96 123 139
predicted accurately
3 Accuracy in % 67 86 97
In the testing 670 healthy and 527 unhealthy images were
considered. Three trails were considered. In each trails the
number of cycles were increased. In the first trail 96 images
were predicted accurately with three cycles and an accuracy
of 67% was obtained. In the next second trail, 86% accuracy
was attained by predicting 123 images as accurate with 5
cycles. In the last third trial 139 images were predicted
accurate with an improved accuracy of 97% for 7 cycles. It
can be observed that as the number of cycles increases the
accuracy of prediction improves but at the cost of increase
in time to process.
V. LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES FACED
Despite of being more accurate, several challenges were
faced in this process. The main challenge is that the
orientation of the silkworm. The disease can be detected
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 more accurately if the silkworm is on the correct orientation.
If silkworm orientation is not proper while getting the
samples, it would lead to incorrect results. Next is about
getting more data samples to train the model, if there are no
correct data samples then training the machine with
incorrect samples do not give accurate results. Illumination
is another challenge which was faced while taking the
pictures. Due to the change in the illumination every image
had a change in the pixel values.
VI. CONCLUSION
Silkworms are the most sensitive creatures, which require
a lot of facilities to rear. The proposed work would be the
stepping stone towards avoiding human intervention in the
process of rearing which makes a better environment for the
worms to rear. Deep learning methods, image processing
techniques and machine learning would be the better
solutions to the problems faced in the silk rearing industry.
The results obtained are accurate, faster and reliable with
accuracy of 0.97 for healthy and 0.99 for diseased Grasserie
silkworm. This non-invasive approach is simple to
implement which will alert the users in the initial stages of
the disease so that precautionary methods can be taken in the
early stage to avoid further spread of the disease. Present
model is restricted to identify Grasserie diseases which can
be further developed it to identify other diseases as well. In
addition, to improve the accuracy number of cycles were
increased at cost of surge in processing time.
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