Eighty bacterial strains were isolated from root nodules of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) plants agriculturally grown in Northern Peru. After isolation, fifty of them reinfected cowpea and eight showed better symbiotic performance than control plants treated with nitrate both under greenhouse and field. Repetitive extragenic palindromic polymerase chain reaction (REP-PCR) clustered the strains into 3 REP-PCR groups. The partial sequence of the 16S rRNA gene from a representative strain of each REP-PCR pattern showed that the strains were closely related to members of genus Bradyrhizobium of the Alphaproteobacteria, but affiliation at the species level was not clear. Pairwise alignments among globally aligned sequences of the 16S rRNA genes, the sequencing of the housekeeping genes atpD, glnII, and recA, and their concatenated phylogenetic analysis showed that strains Rc-391-01 and Rc-458-01...

Eighty bacterial strains were isolated from root nodules of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) plants agriculturally grown in Northern Peru. After isolation, fifty of them reinfected cowpea and eight showed better symbiotic performance than control plants treated with nitrate both under greenhouse and field. Repetitive extragenic palindromic polymerase chain reaction (REP-PCR) clustered the strains into 3 REP-PCR groups. The partial sequence of the 16S rRNA gene from a representative strain of each REP-PCR pattern showed that the strains were closely related to members of genus Bradyrhizobium of the Alphaproteobacteria, but affiliation at the species level was not clear. Pairwise alignments among globally aligned sequences of the 16S rRNA genes, the sequencing of the housekeeping genes atpD, glnII, and recA, and their concatenated phylogenetic analysis showed that strains Rc-391-01 and Rc-458-01...