FitoNova does not produce plant protection data: it reproduces it. The source is Romania's public national authorisation registry. This page sets out what is taken from it, how that reaches the phone, how fresh it is, what “withdrawn” means — and, just as importantly, what the app does not do with any of it.
01 · The official authorisation registry: where the data comes from
In Romania a plant protection product may only be used if it is authorised, and the record of those authorisations is public: it shows which product is authorised, on which crops (from wheat, maize and sunflower to potato, grapevine, orchard and vegetables), against which pests, at what dose and with what pre-harvest interval — and what has been withdrawn. The record is kept by the phytosanitary authority and published through PESTEXPERT (aloe.anfdf.ro). FitoNova is an independent app with no connection to the authority. The terms it is written in — authorisation, active substance, authorised dose, pre-harvest interval — are explained briefly in the glossary of plant protection terms.
FitoNova reads that published record regularly, packs it into a compact database and sends it to the phone. It adds no products, corrects no doses, and fills in none of the fields the source left empty.
02 · What the app mirrors from the registry
What is mirrored is the part of the registry that describes the product and its authorised use:
| Group | Fields mirrored |
|---|---|
| The product | name, status (e.g. authorised / withdrawn), category, class, formulation type, toxicity group, authorisation certificate number and date, expiry date, application number and date and, where present, the reason for withdrawal |
| Authorisation holders | name (a product may have several) and the country as declared |
| Active substances | name, amount and unit, as the registry states them |
| Authorised uses | crop, pest category (diseases, weeds, pests), the named pests, the authorised dose, the pre-harvest interval and the number of treatments |
| Active substances as records of their own | status, class, producer, purity, ISO name, CAS number, residue definition |
Maximum residue levels and risk and safety phrases are not mirrored: these fields are empty in the source for the products we checked, and an empty field copied across looks like information missing from the app rather than from the registry.
Dose, pre-harvest interval and number of treatments are text, not numbers — exactly as the registry publishes them, with ranges, decimal commas and sometimes the application method in the same sentence. The app keeps them whole.
03 · How an update reaches the phone
The registry is read periodically. A new catalogue version is published only when the content has actually changed: if the registry has not moved, nothing is published and nothing is downloaded.
The phone watches the published version. When a new one appears it downloads it, checks its fingerprint and its size, and only then replaces the catalogue on the device. A file that fails the check is never used.
The catalogue is replaced whole. That is why logbook entries keep a copy of the product's details as they stood at the time of the treatment: a new registry version cannot rewrite what you recorded.
The catalogue does not ship inside the installer: the first launch needs the internet twice, once to sign in and once to download the catalogue. Every launch after that opens fully offline.
With no connection nothing is downloaded, and the catalogue already installed is left untouched and stays usable. The home screen says either “Up to date” or that the update could not be read, in both cases alongside the date of the last download.
That date is the date of the download onto your phone, not the date the registry changed. Separately from that, the home screen also shows the most recent certificate in the installed catalogue.
Between two updates there can be a lag behind the official record. We do not promise a daily update.
04 · What “withdrawn” means, and what “not authorised” means
The registry gives every product a status. Two matter in practice: authorised and withdrawn. Withdrawn means the product no longer appears as authorised in the registry; the difference between a withdrawn and a not authorised product is set out in the glossary. The app does not interpret the consequences: the reason for withdrawal is shown word for word as the registry writes it, and the deadlines and obligations that follow are read from the official decision and from the label.
Because a withdrawal is the most expensive thing to miss, it is marked in several places:
- every product carries a status badge, and the withdrawn one is marked differently, not merely coloured differently;
- search results are split into two sections, authorised and not authorised — the second is named that way rather than “withdrawn”, because statuses that are not a withdrawal land there too;
- on the product sheet the reason for withdrawal comes first, ahead of every other detail;
- when you record a treatment or work out a dose with a product that is not authorised, the app warns you — but it does not stop you, because a treatment already carried out is a fact that has to be recorded;
- a separate screen shows what changed in the registry against the previous version: withdrawn, re-authorised, newly added;
- with alerts switched on you are notified, as the catalogue updates, when a product in “My products”, or one you have used in the logbook, moves from authorised to another status. Only that change sends a notification.
05 · What the app does not do
The app recommends no product and draws up no treatment plan. The “what else is authorised here” list on a use is a list of facts from the registry, not a suggestion.
Doses and pre-harvest intervals are not rewritten into tidier numbers. Where the text cannot be read without doubt, the calculator declines to calculate and no harvest reminder is scheduled, instead of approximating.
Where the app and the product label or the official registry disagree, the label and the registry prevail. The app reproduces the record for information.
The decision to use a product, the accuracy of the logbook entries and compliance with legal obligations all remain the user's.
06 · About the figures on this site
The figures on the home page are illustrative: they show the order of magnitude of the registry, not a live count. Do not read them as official statistics.
The figure that matters to you is the one in the app: the home screen states exactly how many products the catalogue installed on your phone contains, and when it was downloaded.
One thing can be said qualitatively and stays true: at the time of writing, more than half of the registry's entries are no longer authorised. That is why search splits its results into two sections instead of mixing them.
07 · Faults that come from the source
The public registry has irregularities, and the app carries them through as they are rather than quietly “fixing” them:
- The certificate number is not an identifier
- The registry holds values of very different shapes, including short numbers and strings that look like a date. You can search on it, but it cannot serve as a unique key.
- The holder's country is not reliable
- Sometimes a city appears where the country should be. Treat the field as a hint, never as a fact.
- Text cut off mid-word
- Some fields are truncated in the source itself. The app shows them truncated, saying so, rather than inventing the rest.
- “-” and “nespecificat” mean empty
- Both are treated as an unfilled field and are not displayed.
- New statuses can appear at any time
- The list of statuses is not closed. An unknown status is shown as it stands, rather than the product dropping out of the catalogue.