Resources · Glossary
The crop protection vocabulary, in plain words.
The terms that appear on a product label, in an agronomist’s reply, or in a FITO diagnosis — written the way we would explain them standing in the field.
16 terms
- Acaricide
- A product aimed specifically at mites — red spider mite and its relatives. An ordinary insecticide often leaves them untouched while killing their natural predators.
- Active substance
- The molecule that actually acts on the pest. Two products sold under different brand names but carrying the same active substance do the same thing — and share the same resistance risk.
- Approval
- The official authorisation to sell and use a product on a given crop, at a given dose. In Algeria it is granted by the Ministry of Agriculture and recorded in the phytosanitary index.
- Deficiency
- A missing nutrient — nitrogen, magnesium, iron. It mimics disease symptoms, and treating it with a fungicide wastes both the product and the week.
- Dose
- The quantity of product per litre of water or per hectare. Under-dosing selects for resistance; over-dosing costs money, leaves residues, and does not work any faster.
- Fungicide
- A product against fungal diseases: late blight, powdery mildew, rust. Most are preventive — they work before symptoms appear, not after.
- Herbicide
- A product against weeds. Selectivity is everything: the molecule that clears a wheat field will burn a market garden.
- Insecticide
- A product against insect pests. Choosing one means knowing the stage: an egg, a larva and an adult do not respond to the same molecule.
- Integrated pest management
- Treating as the last step rather than the first: resistant varieties, rotation, monitoring, biological control — and chemistry only once the threshold is crossed.
- Late blight
- The fungal disease of tomato and potato, driven by damp warmth. It goes from first spot to lost plot in a few days — which is exactly what makes early diagnosis worth so much.
- Phytosanitary index
- The official register of approved products: crop, target pest, dose, pre-harvest interval. FITO only ever recommends what appears in it.
- Powdery mildew
- A white, floury coating on leaves and stems. Unlike late blight it thrives in dry heat, which is why the two are watched for at opposite moments of the season.
- Pre-harvest interval (PHI)
- The minimum number of days between the last treatment and harvest. Cutting it short leaves residues above the legal limit and can get a whole batch rejected.
- Re-entry interval
- How long people must stay out of a treated plot or greenhouse. It protects whoever applies the product, not the crop.
- Resistance
- A pest population a molecule no longer controls, selected by leaning on the same active substance too often. Alternating chemical families is the only real remedy.
- Technical itinerary
- The full sequence of operations on a crop, from soil preparation to harvest. FITO places each diagnosis inside it, so the advice matches the growth stage.
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