Kurdistan province of Iran is one of the main places for producing chickpea, and there is no published research on root-nodulating bacteria of this crop. Plant samples were collected and a total of 73 Rhizobium strains were isolated from root nodules. Nodulation test was done on chickpea plants. Phenotypic characteristics of the 16 representative strains were determined based on the standard bacteriological methods. Total soluble cell protein patterns by electrophoresis approach (SDS-PAGE) showed heterogeneity among the tested rhizobia strains. Based on the phenotypic features, Rhizobium strains of three groups belong to different species of the genus Mesorhizobioum including M. ciceri and M. mediterraneum and Mesorhizobium sp. The PCR technique was employed for amplification of 16S rDNA and atpD genes. For further characterisation, amplified fragment of 16S rDNA gene from a representative strain (AK21) using primers 41F and 1488R was subjected to sequencing. Sequences were aligned by BLAST software at NCBI GenBank and results showed 99% similarity with M. mediterraneum strain BKBCF3q.
