Taxonomic Refinement of .

comprises a number of economically important fruit tree pathogens classified within different pathovars. Dozens of nonpathogenic and taxonomically unvalidated strains are also designated as , leading to a complicated taxonomic status in the species. In this study, we have evaluated the whole-genome resources of all available spp. strains designated as in the public databases to refine the members of the species based on DNA similarity indexes and core genome-based phylogeny. Our results show that, of the nine validly described pathovars within , pathotype strains of seven pathovars are taxonomically genuine, belonging to the core clade of the species regardless of their pathogenicity on the host of isolation (thus the validity of pathovar status). However, strains of pv. and pv. do not belong to because of the low DNA similarities between the type strain of the species and the pathotype strains of these two pathovars. Thus, we propose to elevate the two pathovars to the rank of a species as sp. nov. with the type strain CFBP 7408 and sp. nov. with the type strain CFBP 3123. In addition, other mislabeled strains of were scattered within spp. that belong to previously described species or represent novel species that await formal description.