sp. nov., a novel plant pathogen isolated from .

This paper describes a novel species isolated in 2011 and 2012 from nursery-grown cultivars in Flanders, Belgium. After 4 days at 28 °C, the strains yielded yellow, round, convex and mucoid colonies. Pathogenicity of the strains was confirmed on its isolation host, as well as on . Analysis using MALDI-TOF MS identified the strains as belonging to the genus but excluded them from the species . A phylogenetic tree based on confirmed the close relation to . Three fatty acids were dominant in the isolates: anteiso-C, iso-C and summed feature 3 (C 7/C 6). Unlike pathovars, the strains were unable to grow in the presence of lithium chloride and could only weakly utilize d-fructose-6-PO and glucuronamide. Phylogenetic characterization based on multilocus sequence analysis and phylogenomic characterization revealed that the strains are close to, yet distinct from, . The genome sequences of the strains had average nucleotide identity values ranging from 94.35-95.19 % and DNA-DNA hybridization values ranging from 55.70 to 59.40 % to genomes of the pathovars. A genomics-based loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay was developed which was specific to the strains for its early detection. A novel species, e sp. nov., is proposed with strain LMG 31884 (=CCOS 1956) as the type strain.