"Field-captured Dataset of Banana Plants across Growth Stages and Early Disease Conditions"

"Banana is one of the fastest-growing fruits in the global market, with a trade value exceeding US $17.3 billion in 2024\u20132025. India has emerged as a significant contributor, with fresh banana exports expanding nearly tenfold over the past decade, reaching ~US $300 million in FY 2023\u201324, up from US $176 million in FY 2022\u201323, and accounting for 1.74% of the global market share. Given this economic importance, the development of datasets and computational models to enhance banana production and disease management holds substantial potential. To support such efforts, this dataset provides 1,090 high-resolution images of banana plants, captured from a plantation located in Solapur, Maharashtra, India. The collection includes images of banana saplings, raw bananas with flowers, healthy plants, and plants displaying early signs of disease. All images were obtained in-person using a digital camera (smartphone) and are provided in raw, unprocessed form. The dataset is organized as a single folder of unlabelled images, giving researchers the flexibility to preprocess, annotate, and classify them as required. The diversity in plant stages, from saplings to mature plants, combined with both healthy and diseased samples, makes the dataset valuable for developing and benchmarking machine learning and computer vision models in agricultural disease detection and crop monitoring. This openly available dataset can serve as a foundational resource for researchers in agriculture, plant pathology, and artificial intelligence, promoting reproducibility and further innovation in early disease detection systems."