Bacteria isolated from eucalyptus leaves and shoots showing symptoms of blight and die-back collected in Uganda, Uruguay and Argentina and from maize displaying brown stalk rot symptoms in South Africa were tentatively placed in the genus Pantoea on the basis of phenotypic and biochemical tests. These isolates, together with two strains (LMG 2558 and LMG 2560) previously assigned to Pantoea agglomerans based on protein electrophoregrams but later excluded from this species, were further

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... ated using molecular techniques. 16S rRNA gene sequencing and multilocus sequence analyses (MLSA) revealed that the strains were phylogenetically closely related to Pantoea agglomerans, Pantoea stewartii and Pantoea ananatis. MLSA and amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis placed the strains into four separate clusters, not containing any of the type strains of species of the genus Pantoea. DNA-DNA hybridization confirmed the classification of the isolates into four novel species, for which the names Pantoea vagans sp. nov.