It plays a similar role in real algebraic geometry that the radical of an ideal plays in algebraic geometry over an algebraically closed field.
More specifically, Hilbert's Nullstellensatz says that when I is an ideal in a polynomial ring with coefficients coming from an algebraically closed field, the radical of I is the set of polynomials vanishing on the vanishing locus of I.
In real algebraic geometry, the Nullstellensatz fails as the real numbers are not algebraically closed.
However, one can recover a similar theorem, the real Nullstellensatz, by using the real radical in place of the (ordinary) radical.
The real radical of an ideal I in a polynomial ring