Summary Twenty-six Rhizobium galegae strains, representing the center of origin of the host plants Galega orientalis and G. officinalis as well as other geographic regions, were used in a polyphasic analysis of the relationships of R. galegae strains. Phage typing, lipopolysaccharide (LPS) profiling, pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profiling and rep-PCR (use of repetitive sequences as PCR primers for genomic fingerprinting) with REP and ERIC primers investigated nonsymbiotic properties, whereas plasmid profiling and hybridisation with a nif gene probe, and with nodB, nodD, nod box and an IS sequence from the symbiotic region as probes, were used to reveal the relationships of symbiotic genes. The results were used in pairwise calculations of distances between the strains, and the distances were visualised as a dendrogram. Indexes of association were compared for all tests pooled, and for chromosomal tests and symbiotic markers separately, to display the input of the different categories of tests on the grouping of the strains. Our study shows that symbiosis related genetic traits in R. galegae divide strains belonging to the species into two groups, which correspond to strains forming an effective symbioses with G. orientalis and G. officinalis respectively. We therefore propose that Rhizobium galegae strains forming an effective symbiosis with Galega orientalis are called R. galegae bv. orientalis and strains forming an effective symbiosis with Galega officinalis are called R. galegae bv. officinalis
