A taxonomic study was performed on strain R2A10-2(T), isolated from greenhouse soil cultivated with lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.), collected in Wanju Province, Korea. The bacterial cells were Gram-negative, aerobic, short rods. The growth temperature and pH were 5-35 degrees C and 5.0-9.0, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that this isolate had 93.3-97.7 % similarity to Chryseobacterium species: the highest sequence similarities were to the type strains of Chryseobacterium daecheongense (97.7 %), Chryseobacterium formosense (97.1 %) and Chryseobacterium defluvii (96.9 %). Low levels of DNA-DNA relatedness were found between strain R2A10-2(T) and the type strains of these three species (<28 %). Differences in phenotypic properties were found with respect to Chryseobacterium species with validly published names. The predominant cellular fatty acids were iso-15 : 0 (40.0 %), iso-17 : 0 3-OH (21.9 %), iso-17 : 1omega9c (11.7 %) and summed feature 4 (iso-15 : 0 2-OH and/or 16 : 1omega7c/t, 11.0 %). Menaquinone MK-6 was detected as the sole respiratory quinone. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 37.8 mol%. On the basis of the genomic and phenotypic evidence, this isolate represents a novel species of the genus Chryseobacterium, for which the name Chryseobacterium wanjuense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is R2A10-2(T) (=KACC 11468(T)=DSM 17724(T)).