Revision of the taxonomic status of the species Rhizobium lupini and reclassification as Bradyrhizobium lupini comb. nov.

The species Rhizobium lupini was isolated from Lupinus nodules and included in the Approved Lists of Bacterial Names in 1980. Nevertheless, on the basis of the analysis of the type strain of this species available in DSMZ, DSM 30140(T), whose 16S rRNA gene was identical to that of the type strain of Bradyrhizobium japonicum, R. lupini was considered a later synonym of this species. In this study we confirmed that the strain DSM 30140(T) belongs to the species B. japonicum, but also that it cannot be the original strain of R. lupini because this species effectively nodulated Lupinus whereas strain DSM 30140(T) was able to nodulate soybean but not Lupinus. Since the original type strain of R. lupini was deposited into the USDA collection by L. W. Erdman under the accession number USDA 3051(T) we analysed the taxonomic status of this strain showing that although it belongs to the genus Bradyrhizobium instead of genus Rhizobium, it is phylogenetically distant from B. japonicum and closely related to Bradyrhizobium canariense. The type strains R. lupini USDA 3051(T) and B. canariense BTA-1(T) share 16S rRNA, recA and glnll gene sequences with similarities of 99.8%, 96.5% and 97.1%, respectively. They presented a DNA DNA hybridization value of 36% and also differed in phenotypic characteristics and slightly in the proportions of some fatty acids. Therefore we propose the reclassification of the species Rhizobium lupini as Bradyrhizobium lupini comb. nov. The type strain is USDA 3051(T) (=CECT 8630(T)=LMG 28514(T)).