Characteristics of Rhizobium tianshanense sp. nov., a moderately and slowly growing root nodule bacterium isolated from an arid saline environment in Xinjiang, People's Republic of China.

We performed a numerical analysis of 148 phenotypic characteristics of 20 strains of root nodule bacteria isolated from an arid saline desert soil in the Xinjiang region of northwestern People's Republic of China and compared these organisms with 28 Rhizobium and Bradyrhizobium strains obtained from different regions of the People's Republic of China and from other countries, including nine type strains of different species. All of the strains examined clustered into two groups at a similarity level of more than 63%. Group I included all of the previously described Rhizobium species and was divided into eight subgroups, which corresponded to previously described Rhizobium species, at a similarity level of more than 82%. Group II was divided into the following three subgroups at a similarity level of more than 80% Bradyrhizobium japonicum, a cluster containing 17 moderately and slowly growing strains isolated in the Xinjiang region, and a small subgroup containing three fast-growing strains. The generation times of the moderately and slowly growing strains were 5 to 15 h, and these organisms produced acid in medium containing mannitol. The DNA G+C contents of the members of this group ranged from 59 to 63 mol%. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments revealed that the levels of DNA homology among all of the moderately and slowly growing strains obtained from Xinjiang were more than 70% and that the levels of DNA homology between representative strains of this group and the type strains of all previously described species of root- and stem-nodulating bacteria were low.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)