Safe to Harvest & Safe to Re-Enter

Not until the pre-harvest interval (PHI) of every product you applied has elapsed. The PHI is the minimum number of days the label requires between the last application and harvest, set so residues fall below the maximum residue limit. Log each spray with its date and the database returns the earliest safe harvest date; with several products, the binding date is whichever PHI runs longest. For example mancozeb on grapes carries a 30-day PHI, so a spray on 1 June means no harvest before 1 July.

PHI (pre-harvest interval) is measured in days and protects the consumer — it is the wait between the last spray and harvest. REI (restricted-entry interval) is measured in hours and protects the worker — it is how long people must stay out of the treated area after spraying unless wearing the required PPE. A spinosad spray on tomatoes, for instance, has a 1-day PHI but only a 4-hour REI; chlorpyrifos on cotton has a 21-day PHI and a 24-hour REI.

Until the restricted-entry interval (REI) has passed, which depends on the product's toxicity. Low-toxicity products like spinosad or many strobilurins have a 4-hour REI; moderately toxic organophosphates and some pyrethroids run 12–24 hours; the most toxic can reach 48 hours or more. The database adds the REI hours to your spray time and shows the exact date and hour it is safe to re-enter.

A maximum residue limit (MRL) is the highest pesticide residue legally allowed on a commodity, set by Codex Alimentarius and national regulators. Observing the full PHI is what normally keeps residues under the MRL — harvesting early is the most common reason produce fails. When any product in your plan has a very tight MRL (0.05 mg/kg or lower), this tool flags it so you observe the full interval and consider a residue test before a sale that must meet MRL.

If you applied more than one product, the safe harvest date is not the average or the most recent — it is the latest of all the individual PHI dates, because you must clear every product. The same is true for re-entry: the binding REI is whichever product keeps you out longest. The database computes both and tells you which spray sets the binding date.

It varies widely by product and crop. From the built-in registry: spinosad and chlorantraniliprole on tomato are 1 day; lambda-cyhalothrin on tomato 5 days; mancozeb on tomato 5 days but 30 days on grapes; chlorpyrifos on cotton 21 days; tebuconazole on wheat 35 days; glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant on soybean 56 days. Always confirm against the actual label, which is binding.

Yes — markedly. The same active ingredient can carry very different intervals on different crops because residue behaviour and MRLs differ. Mancozeb is 5 days on tomato but 30 days on grapes; azoxystrobin is 14 days on grapes, 21 on rice and 35 on wheat. That is exactly why this database is indexed by active ingredient × crop rather than by product alone.

Yes. Add as many spray rows as your programme needs, each as an active-ingredient × crop pair with its own date. The tool computes every product's harvest and re-entry date, then surfaces the single binding harvest date and binding re-entry date and time, plus a live countdown of days remaining. That makes it easy to schedule the last spray so the field is clear in time for a planned harvest.

PHI (days) and MRL (mg/kg) follow Codex Alimentarius MRLs and registered label intervals from the US EPA and India's Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIB&RC); REI (hours) follows the US EPA Worker Protection Standard restricted-entry intervals on the label. These are representative registered values for planning — intervals can differ by formulation, application rate, region and crop, so your product label is always the binding authority.

No. The label is the legal authority and may specify a different PHI or REI than the representative value shown here, especially across regions and formulations. Use the database to plan and to compare the binding interval across several products quickly, then confirm every figure against the labels you actually sprayed before you harvest or send workers back in.

Usually because the wait was shorter than the full PHI, the rate was higher than label, or a second product with a longer PHI was sprayed later and reset the binding date. Residues decay over the PHI window, so harvesting even a few days early can leave residues above the MRL. Enter every spray here so the binding PHI — the longest one — drives your harvest date, not the first spray you remember.

No. The PHI assumes normal weathering and is set on residue data, so you cannot shortcut it by washing or relying on rain — and rain can also reduce efficacy, prompting a re-spray that pushes the binding date later. Always observe the full pre-harvest interval; washing at harvest is a food-hygiene step, not a residue-compliance one.