Polyphasic characterization of rhizobia that nodulate Phaseolus vulgaris in West Africa (Senegal and Gambia)

Fifty-eight new isolates were obtained from root nodules of common bean (#Phaseolus vulgaris$) cultivated in soils originating from different agroecological areas in Senegal and Gambia (West Africa). A polyphasic approach including both phenotypic and genotypic techniques was used to study the diversity of the 58 #Rhizobium$ isolates and to determine their taxonomic relationships with reference strains. All the techniques performed, analysis of multilocus enzyme electrophoretic patterns, SDS-PAGE profiles of total cell proteins, PCR-RFLP analysis of the genes encoding 16S rRNA and of the 16S-23S RNA intergenic spacer region (ITS-PCR-RFLP), auxanographic tests using API galleries and nodulation tests lead to the consensus conclusion that the new rhizobial isolates formed two main distinct groups, I and II, belonging to #Rhizobium tropici$ type B and #Rhizobium etli$, respectively. By MLEE #R. etli$ and group II strains showed several related electrophoretic types, evidencing some extent of internal heterogeneity among them. This heterogeneity was confirmed by other techniques (ITS-PCR-RFLP, SDS-PAGE and host-plant-specificity) with the same nine distinct strains of group II showing some differences from the core of group II (54 strains). (Résumé d'auteur