Crown gall disease in grapevine is caused by pathogenic strains of Rhizobium vitis with a tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmids. A nonpathogenic strain, VAR03-1 of R. vitis, has been isolated from the grapevine root of nursery stock and it was shown to act as a biological control agent to crown gall disease. Its disease-suppressive effect was observed even when it was coinoculated with the pathogen in a 1:1 ratio. Here, we present the complete genome data of R. vitis VAR03-1, assembled by sequencing reads obtained by both PacBio and Illumina technologies with annotation. This genome sequence could contribute to investigations of the molecular basis underlying the biocontrol activity as well as the root-colonization ability of this bacterial strain.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Keywords: Rhizobium vitis; antitumorigenic bacterial strain; biological control agent; crown gall disease.