Extract data from phytosanitary certificates

A phytosanitary certificate is the plant health passport for a shipment of plants or plant products. Issued by the exporting country's National Plant Protection Organization (NPPO) under the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and its ISPM 12 model certificate, it certifies that the consignment was inspected and found free from the quarantine pests the importing country regulates, so a container of citrus, cut flowers, seed, or timber can cross a border without being turned back or destroyed. An importer, a customs broker, and a plant health inspector at the port of entry all read the same certificate: the exporting and importing parties, the declared plant products with their botanical names, the treatment applied, the inspection date, and the authorized official who signed it. Without a valid certificate the goods do not clear, and a mismatch between the botanical name on the certificate and the goods in the container holds the whole consignment. Species-level and treatment-level detail is what matters. Each commodity line pairs a plain description with a scientific name, the botanical Latin binomial such as Citrus sinensis or Rosa hybrida, because plant health rules are written against species rather than trade descriptions. Batch or lot numbers tie the certificate to a specific parcel of the consignment, the quantity and net mass are stated per line, and the treatment applied, fumigation with a named chemical at a dose, or heat treatment, is recorded with the inspection date that verifies it. Beyond the commodities, the certificate names the issuing organization, carries the commodity's Combined Nomenclature code for the customs side, and states the country of origin and the country of destination. A re-export certificate references the original phytosanitary certificate it travels on. For a consignment entering the European Union, the certificate also has to match the Common Health Entry Document for plants (CHED-PP) lodged in the EU TRACES system before the border control post releases it. Talonic reads the phytosanitary certificate and returns the exporter and consignee, the declared plant products with their scientific names and batch numbers, the treatment and inspection detail, and the issuing authority and authorized official as structured fields. So a certificate issued 2026-04-12 for a consignment from Valencia to Rotterdam, listing Citrus sinensis under commodity code 0805.10, a 24,000 kg net mass invoiced at 38,400.00 EUR, and a methyl bromide fumigation verified at inspection on 2026-04-10, loads into a trade compliance system with its species and treatment fields intact, whether the source is a clean issued PDF or a scanned stamped original.

What gets extracted from phytosanitary certificates

How extraction works for phytosanitary certificates

Phytosanitary certificates arrive as authority-issued PDFs, portal exports, and scanned stamped originals, and while the IPPC ISPM 12 model certificate fixes the sections, each national organization lays them out in its own language and form. Talonic classifies the certificate and binds it to the customs schema in the Field Registry, which separates the exporting and importing parties from the repeating commodity block. Each commodity holds its plain description, its botanical scientific name, its Combined Nomenclature code, its quantity and net mass, and its batch or lot number, and the treatment applied is captured with the inspection date, parsed to ISO 8601, and the issuing organization that verified it. Countries of origin, dispatch, and destination are held as country codes, and the authorized official who signed the certificate is captured for the audit trail. Inspectors and brokers verify a scientific name or a treatment against the source certificate through the per-field confidence score and pixel-region pointer that conform to DIN SPEC 91491. The extraction structures what the certificate states and does not determine whether the goods meet an importing country's plant health requirements.

Sample extraction

A phytosanitary certificate for a citrus consignment, Valencia to Rotterdam

{
  "document_number": "PC-ES-2026-114879",
  "document_date": "2026-04-12",
  "exporter": "Naranjas de Valencia S.L., Valencia, ES",
  "consignee": "Hansa Fruchtimport GmbH, Rotterdam, NL",
  "country_of_dispatch_export": "ES",
  "country_of_destination": "NL",
  "country_of_origin": "ES",
  "issuing_authority": "Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentacion (Spanish NPPO)",
  "authorized_official.name": "M. Torres",
  "inspection_date": "2026-04-10",
  "pest_free_status": true,
  "treatment_applied": "Methyl bromide fumigation, 48 g/m3, 2 h",
  "plant_commodities": [
    {
      "declared_plant_products": "Fresh sweet oranges",
      "scientific_name": "Citrus sinensis",
      "commodity_code": "0805.10",
      "quantity": 1200,
      "unit_of_measurement": "cartons",
      "net_mass": "24000",
      "type_of_packages": "CT",
      "number_of_packages": "1200",
      "batch_number": "LOT-VLC-0412"
    }
  ],
  "phytosanitary_treatments": [
    {
      "batch_number": "LOT-VLC-0412",
      "treatment_applied": "Methyl bromide fumigation",
      "inspection_date": "2026-04-10",
      "commodity_code": "0805.10"
    }
  ]
}

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