In this study, nine Gram-negative, motile and rod-shaped bacteria were isolated during a Germany-wide investigation of raw milk microbiota. The strains could be differentiated from their closest relatives by phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characterization and average nucleotide identity (ANIb) values calculated from draft genome assemblies. Strains MBT-1T, MBT-8, MBT-9, MBT-10, MBT-11 and MBT-12 were related to the Pseudomonas chlororaphis subgroup. Isolates MBT-2T, MBT-13 and MBT-14 were closely related to Pseudomonas rhizosphaerae DSM 16299T with an ANIb of 88.2 % and a genome-to-genome distance result of 36.0 %. The G+C content of the DNA of strains MBT-1T and MBT-2T was 60.84 and 62.48 mol%, respectively. The major fatty acids were C16 : 1 ω7c (summed feature 3), C16 : 0 and C18 : 1 ω7c (summed feature 8). The strains were catalase-positive, while production of urease, β-galactosidase and indole were negative. Growth occurred at 4-30 °C and at pH values of pH 6.0-8.0. Based on these results, we conclude that the strains belong to two novel species, for which the names Pseudomonas kielensis sp. nov. and Pseudomonas baltica sp. nov. are proposed. The type strains are MBT-1T (=DSM 111668 T= LMG 31954T) and MBT-2T (=DSM 111761 T=LMG 31955T).
Keywords: MALDI TOF MS; Pseudomonas; new taxa; whole genome sequencing.