Customs officers use a drone for quarantining inbound nursery stock.

Recently in Ningbo Customs District, the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, also known as drone) technology was used for quarantining inbound nursery stock at Beilun Customs House for the first time.

Ningbo is China’s largest port of entry for the pine of Podocarpus macrophyllus and main seedlings. Since this year, Beilun Customs House alone has finished quarantining 277 batches of imported nursery stock.

In light of GACC’s requirements for “smart customs, smart border and smart connection”, Beilun Customs House applies such new technologies as UAV to smart and precise control over imports and exports.

With a drone in the use, customs officers can inspect the nursery stock both on the ground and from the sky, quickly judging plant species and quantity, and also make epidemic monitoring around the quarantine nursery. High-definition images snapped by the drone can be sent to pest experts for remote identification.

As the drone enables all-round inspection and quarantine at higher efficiency, Beilun Customs will further improve the UAV application to get better control results.