A Gram-positive, yellowish bacterium strain AK-1T was isolated from soil sample collected from peanut (Arachis hypogaea) crop field and studied by using a polyphasic approach. The organism had morphological and chemotaxonomic properties consistent with its classification in the genus Agromyces. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence showed that strain AK-1T was closely related to Agromyces aurantiacus (98.6%) followed by Agromyces soli (98.3%), Agromyces tropicus (97.6%), Agromyces ulmi (97.3%), Agromyces flavus (97.2%), and Agromyces italicus (97.0%), whereas the sequence similarity values with respect to the other Agromyces species with validly published names were between 95.3 and 96.7？%. However, the DNA-DNA hybridization values obtained between strain AK-1T and other related strains were well below the threshold that is required for the proposal of a novel species. The DNA content of the strain is 71.8？mol%. The above data in combination with the phenotypic distinctiveness of AK-1T clearly indicate that the strain represents a novel species, for which the name Agromyces arachidis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is AK-1T (=MTCC 10524T = JCM 19251T). 1. Introduction The genus Agromyces was first proposed by Gledhill and Casida Jr [1] and later on emended by Zgurskaya et al. [2]. At present, the genus Agromyces comprises ？？24 species with validly published names (http://www.bacterio.net/a/agromyces.html), and all these species have been isolated from different environmental sources: soils from fertile meadows, rhizosphere, and plants to rock art paintings [1–18]. In the present study, bacterial strain AK-1T, isolated from soil sample, is described and subjected to the polyphasic taxonomy. 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison revealed that the isolate is Agromyces-like organism. The aim of the present study is to determine the exact taxonomic position of the isolate. 2. Materials and Methods Strain AK-1T was isolated from a soil sample collected from peanut (Arachis hypogaea) crop field, Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh, India (18°14′N latitude 83°58′E longitude), by the dilution-plate technique on tryptic soy agar medium (TSA; HiMedia) and maintained as glycerol stocks at ？70？°C. The reference strains A. aurantiacus (MTCC 11069T), A. soli (MTCC 11074T), A. tropicus (MTCC 11075T), A. ulmi (MTCC 10783T), A. flavus (MTCC 11103T), and A. italicus (MTCC 10784T) were obtained from the Microbial Type Culture Collection and Gene Bank (MTCC), Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India. Colony and cell morphologies were studied according to
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