Correspondence

In a previous study, nitrogen-fixing isolates were recovered from the rhizosphere of maize and from surface-sterilized leaves of sugar cane cultivated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, these isolates were identified as belonging to the genus Burkholderia, and whole-cell-protein profiles demonstrated that they are closely related to each other. In the present study, novel isolates were recovered from the roots of different sugar-cane varieties cultivated in diverse geographical regions of Brazil. Twenty-one nitrogen-fixing isolates were analysed using polyphasic taxonomy criteria, including DNA–DNA relatedness, 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, fatty acid profiles, whole-cell-protein patterns and multilocus enzyme electrophoresis profiles, as well as morphological, physiological and biochemical characterization. The analysis confirmed that these isolates belong to a novel species within the genusBurkholderia, for which the name Burkholderia silvatlantica sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain, SRMrh-20T (=LMG 23149T=ATCC BAA-1244T), was isolated from the rhizosphere of maize var. Avantis A2345 cultivated in Seropédica, Rio de Janeiro. The genus Burkholderia was created in 1992 to include seven species transferred from Pseudomonas, with Burkholderi