Diversity and phylogeny of bacteria associated with corn roots inoculated with woodland soils in Canada, and description of Pseudomonas aylmerense sp. nov.

Species of the genus Pseudomonas are aerobic Gram negative
bacteria of the Pseudomonadaceae family.
They are ubiquitous in the rhizosphere of plants, water,
and soil environments. This genus includes bacterial
species of environmental significance such as
phytopathogens, biological control agents, plant growth
promoters and xenobiotic degraders. Fluorescent
pseudomonads are uniquely capable of synthesizing
many metabolites that play a role in maintaining soil
health leading to the bioprotection of crops against
pathogens. Because of this plant bioprotection
characteristic, members of this genus are routinely
being isolated from various environments and
evaluated for antagonistic activity against major plant
fungal plant pathogens. We isolated and characterized
bacteria associated with corn roots inoculated with
soils collected from Canadian woodlands. Genus‐level
identification based on 16S rRNA sequence analysis
classified the 188 isolates into 14 genera. The majority
(62%) of the isolates were affiliated with the
genus Pseudomonas. Other genera identified
were Stenotrophomonas (12%), Enterobacter (6%), Lelli
otia (6%), Rahnella (3%) and Agrobacterium (3%).
Multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) using four
housekeeping genes (gyrB, rpoB, recA and rpoD),
biochemical and physiological tests and repetitive
element PCR of the Pseudomonas isolates identified
four potential novel species. Genome‐based analyses
using digital DNA‐DNA hybridization (dDDH), MUMmerbased
Average Nucleotide Identity (ANIm) and
proteomes comparison confirmed the uniqueness of
one of these potential novel species represented by
strain S1E40. Based on these phenotypic and genotypic
data, strain S1E40 represents an authentic novel
species, tentatively named Pseudomonas aylmerense
sp. nov.