Agromyces excoecariae sp. nov., isolated from the rhizosphere soil of mangrove Excoecaria agallocha

A novel <i>Agromyces</i> strain, designated as M3QZ16-3^T, was isolated from the rhizosphere soil of <i>Excoecaria agallocha</i>, collected from the Maowei Sea Mangrove Nature Reserve in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain M3QZ16-3^T was closely related to species of the genus <i>Agromyces</i> and shared the highest similarity of 99.26% with <i>Agromyces kandeliae</i> Q22^T. The average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values between strain M3QZ16-3^T and the type strain of <i>A. kandeliae</i> Q22^T were 88.2% and 34.4%, respectively. The polar lipids of strain M3QZ16-3^T comprised diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, one unidentified glycolipid, one unidentified polar lipid and two unidentified lipids. The major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C_15:0, anteiso-C_17:0, iso-C_15:0 and iso-C_16:0, and the predominant menaquinones (MK; vitamin K₂) were MK-12 (78.3%) and MK-11 (14.3%). Cell-wall amino acids were 2,4-diaminobutyric acid, glutamic acid, glycine and alanine. The genome size of strain M3QZ16-3^T was 3.8 Mb, with a DNA G+C content value of 71.7 mol%. Based on the above descriptions, we propose strain M3QZ16-3^T to represent a novel species of the genus <i>Agromyces</i>, for which the name <i>Agromyces excoecariae</i> sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is M3QZ16-3^T (=MCCC 1K07179^T=JCM 34940^T).