Implementation and comparison of machine learning techniques applied to predict the development of aphid populations

Abstract

Insects have an important degree of collaboration for the maintenance of the ecosystem on the planet. However, after reaching a certain population level and causing damage to plants, some insects are considered as pests and represent a threat to agriculture. Aphids insects that has characteristics to reach this state as it has a high biotic potential and can cause different types of damage to plants. Climatic data as precipitation, winds and temperatures affect the population quantity of these insects. Therefore, this work proposes to apply different machine learning techniques with the objective to verify the existing correlation between climatic variables and the population dynamics of aphids. It can be concluded that variables such as precipitation, temperature, number of days when it rains in the week and climatic phenomena such as El niño and La niña have an influence on the aphid population. During the work, four models were developed in order to predict the population of these insects. The accuracy of the prediction model developed were 11.4% for Linear Regression; 26.4% for the Artificial Neural Network model; 29.3% for Decision Tree and 41.4% for Random Forest.