About Chapter 12
Chapter 12 of the Harmonized System of Nomenclature (HSN) is titled “Oil seeds and oleaginous fruits, miscellaneous grains, seeds and fruit; industrial or medicinal plants; straw and fodder”. It is part of Section II, Vegetable Products, together with Chapter 06 (live trees and other plants, bulbs, roots and the like), Chapter 07 (edible vegetables and certain roots and tubers), Chapter 08 (edible fruit and nuts; peel of citrus fruit or melons), Chapter 09 (coffee, tea, mate and spices), Chapter 10 (cereals), Chapter 11 (products of the milling industry; malt; starches; inulin), Chapter 13 (lac; gums, resins and other vegetable saps and extracts) and Chapter 14 (vegetable plaiting materials).
The chapter is divided into 14 headings, from 1201 (soya beans, whether or not broken) to 1214 (swedes, mangolds, fodder roots, hay, lucerne, clover, sainfoin, forage kale, lupines). The headings with the most codes that people search for are seeds, fruit and spores, of a kind used for sowing (1209), plants and parts of plants, of a kind used primarily in perfumery (1211), soya beans, whether or not broken (1201), other oil seeds and oleaginous fruits, whether or not broken (1207) and seaweed (1212).
Note 1 lists what heading 1207 takes in, among other seeds: palm nuts and kernels, cotton seeds, castor oil seeds, sesamum, mustard, safflower and poppy seeds, and shea nuts. Nuts of headings 0801 and 0802, and olives, stay out of it.
Every heading is listed below. Under each are the codes that have their own page on Laabam One, 25 codes in this chapter, each with its full classification: its chapter, heading and sub-heading, and the codes beside it.
Every code in this chapter begins with 12: four digits make a heading, six a sub-heading, and eight a tariff item of India's Customs Tariff. How many of those digits a GST tax invoice shows depends on the business, not the goods: under Notification No. 78/2020 – Central Tax, from 1 April 2021, four digits where aggregate turnover in the previous financial year was up to ₹5 crore, and six above it. Up to ₹5 crore, the code may be left off invoices to unregistered buyers.
No GST rate is shown here. GST rates were revised in September 2025, and a rate appears on this site only once it has been checked against the CBIC rate notifications.
Sources: ITC(HS) Chapter 12, DGCI&S (title, headings and notes); Notification No. 78/2020 – Central Tax (HSN digits on invoices).