A Gram-staining-positive, heterotrophic, aerobic, non-motile, non-endospore-forming, yellowcoloured rod, designated strain N5 T , was isolated from a soil sample collected at an industrial waste site in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi, India. In phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences, strain N5T was most closely related to members of established species in the , which had MK-11 and MK-10 as its major menaquinones and anteiso-C 15 : 0 (45 %), anteiso-C 17 : 0 (37 %), iso-C 16 : 0 (8.5 %) and C 16 : 0 (4.5 %) as its predominant fatty acids, were consistent with classification in the genus Microbacterium. Peptidoglycan in the novel strain, which contained ornithine, alanine, glycine, homoserine, glutamic acid, 3-hydroxyglutamic acid, muramic acid and traces of N-glycolyl residues, was of type B2b. The polar lipid profile of strain N5T comprised diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol and an unknown glycolipid. The novel strain's major cell-wall sugars were glucose and galactose. Based on the phylogenetic, DNA-DNA hybridization, chemotaxonomic and phenotypic data, strain N5 T represents a novel species within the genus Microbacterium for which the name Microbacterium amylolyticum sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain is N5 T (5DSM 24221 T 5CCM 7881 T ).