A novel high G+C actinobacterium, designated strain OS1-21 T , was isolated from the rhizosphere soil of a cactus (Opuntia fiscus-indica var. sanboten) and the taxonomic status was investigated using a polyphasic approach. Cells of strain OS1-21 T were aerobic, Gram-stainpositive, non-endospore-forming, non-motile rods; colonies of the cells were circular, translucent, smooth and moderate yellow in colour. LL-Diaminopimelic acid was the diagnostic diamino acid in cell-wall peptidoglycan. The predominant menaquinone was MK-8(H 4 ). The major fatty acids were iso-C 16 : 0 , iso-C 16 : 0 2-OH, 10-methyl C 17 : 0 , 10-methyl C 18 : 0 and C 17 : 1 cis9. The polar lipids contained diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylinositol and two unknown phospholipids. The DNA G+C content was 73.7 mol%. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, the closest phylogenetic neighbours were Nocardioides panacihumi Gsoil 616 T (98.7 % sequence similarity) and Nocardioides terrae VA15 T (97.8 %), followed by Nocardioides marinus CL-DD14 T (97.1 %). DNA-DNA relatedness values of strain OS1-21 T with the type strains of the closest phylogenetic neighbours were low (,16.0 %). Combined data of polyphasic taxonomic analyses revealed that the organism could be assigned to a novel species of the genus Nocardioides, for which the name Nocardioides opuntiae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is OS1-21 T (5KCTC 19804 T 5NBRC 107915 T ).The genus Nocardioides was first erected by Prauser (1976) with the description of Nocardioides albus as the type species and encompasses nocardioform actinobacteria that have LLdiaminopimelic acid as the diamino acid in the peptidoglycan and MK-8(H 4 ) as the major menaquinone. At the time of writing, the genus Nocardioides comprises 68 recognized species (http://www.bacterio.net). Among them, two species have been isolated from rhizosphere soil collected from a cliff of Mara Island, Republic of Korea: Nocardioides ultimimeridianus and Nocardioides maradonensis (Lee et al., 2011). In this study, another Nocardioides strain was isolated from the rhizosphere soil of a cactus collected at a different region from the same island and the classification of this isolate, designated OS1-21 T , is described by a polyphasic approach, based on phenotypic, phylogenetic and DNA-DNA hybridization analyses. 2)] and the agar plates were incubated for 14 days at 30 u C. The isolates were repeatedly subcultured onto International Streptomyces Project (ISP) 2 medium (Shirling & Gottlieb, 1966) and the pure culture was stored in a 20 % (v/v) glycerol solution at 220 u C and 280 u C. For phenotypic comparisons and DNA-DNA hybridization experiments, Nocardioides panacihumi KCTC 19187 T and Nocardioides terrae NBRC 104259 T were grown on ISP 2 medium at 30 u C and used as reference strains.Growth of strain OS1-21 T was tested on ISP 2 medium, nutrient agar (NA; Difco), R2A agar (Difco) and trypticase soy agar (TSA; Difco). The morphological and cultural characteristics of the organisms were examined using cells gro...