This research tackles the critical challenge of achieving precise and efficient feature selection in machine learning-based classification, particularly for smart agriculture, where existing methods often fail to balance exploration and exploitation in complex, high-dimensional datasets. While current approaches, such as standalone nature-inspired optimization algorithms, leverage biological behaviors for feature selection, they are limited by their inability to synergize diverse strategies, resulting in suboptimal performance and scalability. To address this, we introduce the Hybrid Predator Algorithm for Classification (HPA-C), a novel hybrid feature selection algorithm that uniquely integrates the framework of a nature-inspired feature selection technique with position update equations from other algorithms, harnessing diverse biological behaviors like echolocation, foraging, and collaborative hunting. Coupled with a custom convolutional neural network (CNN), HPA-C achieves superior classification accuracy (98.6–99.8%) on agricultural datasets (Plant Leaf Diseases, Weed Detection, Fruits-360, and Fresh n Rotten) and demonstrates exceptional adaptability across diverse imagery applications.

By utilizing radio-frequency sensed data, this study explores the field of precision agriculture and acknowledges the critical role it plays in improving agricultural operations. Specifically, a moisture estimation framework is proposed that employ different machine learning models and feature selection algorithms to estimate the moisture content in grapes. The results show a 12.12% reduction in RMSE, a 12% reduction in MAE, and a 2.22% increase in R2 values compared to a state-of-the-art model utilizing conventional regression-based techniques. These results highlight the superiority of the moisture estimation framework against their regression-based counterparts. Essentially, this work highlights the potential for revolutionizing agriculture through enhanced accuracy and sustainability of agricultural operations by using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms together with radio-frequency sensed data.

Pipelines, in Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) microprocessors, are expected to provide increased throughputs in most cases. However, there are a few instructions, and therefore entire assembly language codes, that execute faster and hazard-free without pipelines. It is usual for the compilers to generate codes from high level description that are more suitable for the underlying hardware to maintain symmetry with respect to performance; this, however, is not always guaranteed. Therefore, instead of trying to optimize the description to suit the processor design, we try to determine the more suitable processor variant for the given code during compile time, and dynamically reconfigure the system accordingly. In doing so, however, we first need to classify each code according to its suitability to a different processor variant. The latter, in turn, gives us confidence in performance symmetry against various types of codes—this is the primary contribution of the proposed work. We first develop mathematical performance models of three conventional microprocessor designs, and propose a symmetry-improving nonlinear optimization method to achieve code-to-design mapping. Our analysis is based on four different architectures and 324,000 different assembly language codes, each with between 10 and 1000 instructions with different percentages of commonly seen instruction types. Our results suggest that in the sub-micron era, where execution time of each instruction is merely in a few nanoseconds, codes accumulating as low as 5% (or above) hazard causing instructions execute more swiftly on processors without pipelines.