Animal, Plant and Food Inspection Center of Nanjing Customs District

The Animal, Plant and Food Inspection Center of Nanjing Customs District is a technical inspection laboratory operating under Nanjing Customs, part of the General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China, with offices in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. The centre's primary mandate covers quarantine and laboratory examination of animal-, plant- and food-origin commodities crossing the customs district, with the maritime-relevant scope concentrated on ballast water sampling and analysis on international voyages and on biological surveys of sediments from ballast tanks calling at Yangtze River ports. Research teams associated with the laboratory have published peer-reviewed work on dinoflagellate cyst assemblages in sediment samples collected from ballast tanks of international and domestic-route vessels and on washing basins at Jiangyin Port and adjacent Yangtze River yards, and have supported metagenome-sequencing studies that reconstructed more than one hundred microbial genomes from ballast water on international voyages. For shipowners and operators the inspection unit provides ballast water indicative and detailed sampling and analysis to IMO D-2 standards, biological identification of plankton and pathogen indicators, and class-acceptable underwater hull biofouling sampling coordinated with diving partners. The Nanjing Customs inspection centre is recognised by ABS, Bureau Veritas, ClassNK, DNV, Korean Register and Lloyd's Register as a service supplier under the relevant ballast water sampling, environmental testing and in-water survey categories. Field attendance is scheduled around cargo operations and short port stays so that owners and managers can close hull-renewal, special and intermediate survey items without dedicated drydock time, supporting voyage-by-voyage compliance with class and statutory periodicities.