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The choice of methodologies is a pivotal factor in disease identification, particularly when computer vision intersects with agricultural innovation. Safeguarding global food supplies depends on the timely and accurate identification of crop diseases. Deep learning offers a feasible pathway to satisfy this demand. To move this research forward, we engineered and tested a disease identification framework grounded in a novel ensemble strategy. Our contribution includes the presentation of DenseNetMini, a more compact iteration of the DenseNet architecture. We advocate merging DenseNetMini with a learning resizer via an ensemble approach to improve training fidelity and accelerate knowledge acquisition. A further innovative element involves deploying Gradient Product (GP) as the optimization mechanism, efficiently reducing the training time while simultaneously improving model performance. Investigating imagery at varying magnifications reveals remarkable improvements in diagnostic consensus and precision. Accuracy figures on test data reach 99.65%, 98.96%, and 98.11% for the Plantvillage, Tomato leaf, and Appleleaf9 collections, respectively. A core triumph of this investigation is the substantial reduction in computational time, suggesting that GP adoption could make agricultural disease screening more accessible and operationally efficient. Beyond numerical gains, the work foregrounds Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches as indispensable for enhancing the interpretability and clarity of the disease detection framework. By visually pinpointing diagnostically relevant zones on foliage, XAI enhances the model’s comprehensibility, thereby nurturing user confidence and insight into how it arrives at its conclusions.