Pyoverdines are yellow-green, fluorescent pigments excreted by the so-called fluorescent Pseudomonas species.
Due to the bright color and fluorescence, the related phenotypic character is very easy to detect with the aid of
King’s B medium (King et al. 1954). According to
Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, the species
producing the pyoverdines belong to the Pseudomonas
RNA-homology group I (Palleroni 1984) and include the
Pseudomonas species: P. aeruginosa, P. chlororaphis,
P. fluorescens, P. putida and P. syringae. Thanks to recent
results based on polyphasic taxonomy, several newly described species, among them P. jessenii and P. mandelii
(Verhille et al. 1999), P. monteilii (Elomari et al. 1997),
P. rhodesiae (Coroler et al. 1996) and P. veronii (Elomari
et al. 1996), should also be added to the list of pyoverdine-producing species.