Escherichia coli is widely used as an indicator of faecal contamination, as it is assumed that faeces from warm-blooded animals is the primary source of E. coli in the environment. However, various studies have shown that E. coli can survive and multiply in environmental niches, including soil, sand and sediment. E. coli can be assigned to eight main phylogroups but environmental E. coli are associated primarily with phylogrou...

Legumes Lessertia diffusa and Calobota sericea , indigenous to South Africa, are commonly used as fodder crops with potential for sustainable livestock pasture production. Rhizobia were isolated from their root nodules grown in their respective soils from the Succulent Karoo biome (SKB) in South Africa, identified and characterized using a polyphasic approach. Sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA gene confirmed all isolates as Me...

Ralstonia solanacearum and R. pseudosolanacearum are well-known bacterial plant pathogens that cause significant losses to both ornamental and agricultural plants. It has been suggested that they are not the primary cause of bacterial wilt in Eucalyptus species, but rather are opportunistic, taking advantage of trees predisposed to infection by abiotic and biotic factors. To test this hypothesis, the bacterial community within...