Abstract

Dechloromonas is a gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, motile bacterium. Colonies on (aerobic) nutrient agar plates are circular and have a yellow color. Dechloromonas includes several species that can be a risky pathogenic bacterium to the peanut plants, impacting the peanut yield. This study was conducted to isolate and identify Dechloromonas bacterium from a peanut field and a free-living bacterium, Acrobeles complexus, in North West, South Africa. The molecular study was carried out in 2017 at the North West University to identify the bacterium associated with nematode and peanutfield from South Africa's soils using 16S rDNA marker extracted using the chelex method. The bacterium was identified as Dechloromonas. Afterward, 16S rDNA was amplified using specific primers to identify the nematode. The Nblast analysis showed South African Dechloromonas has 94% similarity with a population from South Korea (MK226314). Phylogenetic analysis using maximum likelihood placed this species with those molecularly identified as Dechloromonas 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 to better understand Dechloromonas phylogeny is recommended.