Arthrobacter pokkalii sp nov, a Novel Plant Associated Actinobacterium with Plant Beneficial Properties, Isolated from Saline Tolerant Pokkali Rice, Kerala, India

A novel yellow colony-forming bacterium, strain P3B162(T) was isolated from the pokkali rice rhizosphere from Kerala, India, as part of a project study aimed at isolating plant growth beneficial rhizobacteria from saline tolerant pokkali rice and functionally evaluate their abilities to promote plant growth under saline conditions. The novel strain P3B162(T) possesses plant growth beneficial traits such as positive growth on 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC), production of indole acetic acid (IAA) and siderophore. In addition, it also showed important phenotypic characters such as ability to form biofilm and utilization of various components of plant root exudates (sugars, amino acids and organic acids), clearly indicating its lifestyle as a plant rhizosphere associated bacterium. Taxonomically, the novel strain P3B162(T) was affiliated to the genus Arthrobacter based on the collective results of phenotypic, genotypic and chemotaxonomic analyses. Moreover, molecular analysis using 16S rRNA gene showed Arthrobacter globiformis NBRC 12137(T), Arthrobacter pascens DSM 20545(T) and Arthrobacter liuii DSXY973(T) as the closely related phylogenetic neighbours, showing more than 98% 16S rRNA similarity values, whereas the recA gene analysis displayed Arthrobacter liuii JCM 19864(T) as the nearest neighbour with 94.7% sequence similarity and only 91.7% to Arthrobacter globiformis LMG 3813(T) and 88.7% to Arthrobacter pascens LMG 16255(T). However, the DNA-DNA hybridization values between strain P3B162(T), Arthrobacter globiformis LMG 3813(T), Arthrobacter pascens LMG 16255(T) and Arthrobacter liuii JCM 19864(T) was below 50%. In addition, the novel strain P3B162(T) can be distinguished from its closely related type strains by several phenotypic characters such as colony pigment, tolerance to NaCl, motility, reduction of nitrate, hydrolysis of DNA, acid from sucrose, cell wall sugars and cell wall peptidoglycan structure. In conclusion, the combined results of this study support the classification of strain P3B162(T) as a novel Arthrobacter species and we propose Arthrobacter pokkalii sp.nov.as its name. The type strain is P3B162(T) (= KCTC 29498(T) = MTCC 12358(T)).