On this site you will find:

1) Up-to-date taxonomic information about all validly published and forthcoming rhizobial/agrobacterial taxa.

2) Hands-on tutorials on how to perform rigorous phylogenetic analyses using sequence data, from SSU rRNA sequence alignment and model fitting, up to ML tree searches.

3) Information on current issues in rhizobial taxonomy, systematics and genomics, including scientific meetings and workshops.

4) Advice and recommendations from the Subcommittee for microbiologists on good taxonomic/systematic practice.

Important notes and news:

the advice and recommendations provided by the Subcommittee on this site are of general usefulness in bacterial systematics and taxonomy and particularly appropriate for different types of environmental isolates of Proteobacteria. As a matter of fact, symbiotic nitrogen-fixing legume nodule bacteria belong to different families and orders in the alpha and beta subclasses of the Proteobacteria. See the page on Rhizbial and agrobacterial species with standing in nomenclature for an updated list of taxa.

Starting in August 2012, the validly published taxa in "classic alpha-rhizobial" genera, including Agrobacterium, are updated on a monthly schedule using a semi-automatic procedure, based on the new entries in J.P. Euzéby's "List of Prokaryotic Names with Standing in Nomenclature". These updates correspond to new issue releases of the Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol. (IJSEM) journal. "Non-classic" and novel, not-yet validated rhizobial species, are also included in the list, and updated on a weekly schedule. These taxa are retrieved using an automated PUBMED search. The latter one is a text-based query, and therefore some new publications may not be retrieved in the search. We encourage authors describing new rhizobial taxa to contact this site's webmaster to ensure that their papers are included in the list.