Abstract

Pandoraea species are gram negative, motile, non-spore forming, rod shaped and oxidase positive, obligate aerobes bacteria, and have one polar flagellum. Pandoraea includes several species which can be a risky pathogenic bacteria to the maize plants, and therefore impact on the maize yield. This study was conducted to isolate and identify Pandoraea bacterium from a maize field and a free-living bacterium, Acrobelescomplexus, in North West, South Africa. Therefore, this molecular study was conducted in 2017 at the North West University to identify the bacterium associated with nematode and maize filed from South Africa’s soils using 16S rDNA marker. The DNA was extracted using the chelex method. The bacterium was identified as Pandoraea. Afterward, 16S rDNA was amplified using specific primers to identify the nematode.The Nblast analysis showed South African Pandoraea has 94% similarity with a population from Belgium (LR536859). Phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood placed this species with those molecularly identified as Pandoraea in the same clade with highly supported (100) bootstrap values. In conclusion, this species is identified using 16S rDNA properly. However, using other DNA markers for a better understanding of Pandoraea phylogeny is recommended.