An aerobic, yellow-pigmented, facultatively methylotrophic, Gram-staining-negative, non-spore-forming bacterium, designated strain Gm-149(T), was isolated from the rhizosphere of cultivated soybean in India. Cells were motile by gliding. The predominant cellular fatty acids were iso-C(15 : 0), summed feature 3 (comprising iso-C(15 : 0) 2-OH and/or C(16 : 1) ω 7c), C(16 : 0) 3-OH and anteiso-C(15 : 0), and the major isoprenoid quinone was MK-6. The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain Gm-149(T) was 35.6 mol%. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain Gm-149(T) formed a distinct phyletic line within the genus Flavobacterium. Based on levels of pairwise 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain Gm-149(T) was related most closely to the type strain of Flavobacterium daejeonense (97.1 %), but the level of DNA-DNA relatedness between these two strains was about 11.2 %. On the basis of phenotypic and genotypic data, strain Gm-149(T) is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Flavobacterium, for which the name Flavobacterium glycines sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is Gm-149(T) (=ICMP 17618(T)=NBRC 105008(T)).