Molecular characters of Dechloromonas, a bacterium associated with peanuts from Limpopo Province, South Africa, using 16S rDNA 

Abstract

The peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and sub-tropics, important to both small and large commercial producers. Therefore, finding out the role of bacteria in the soil helps to understand the relationship between bacteria and crops. It is helpful for healthy soil. Dechloromonas is a gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, motile bacterium. Colonies on (aerobic) nutrient agar plates are circular and have a yellow colour. 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 in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The molecular study was carried out in 2022 at the University of Limpopo to identify the bacterium associated with peanut fields from South Africa's soils using 16S rDNA marker extracted using the Chelex method. The bacterium was identified as Dechloromonas. The Nblast analysis showed that South African Dechloromonas had 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 was identified using 16S rDNA properly. However, using other DNA markers to better understand Dechloromonas phylogeny was recommended.