Soft rot of onion segments (and uninoculated control) caused by the environmental Burkholderia cepacia type strain ATCC 25416^T (genomovar I) and by a sputum isolate of B. cepacia from a patient with cystic fibrosis. The isolates share similar phytopathogenicity, colonial morphology, biochemical and genomic fingerprinting profiles. These and other data confirm that there are scant phenotypic, genomic or taxonomic grounds to differentiate environmental and clinical strains of the B. cepacia complex [Govan et al., ASM News 66 (2000), 124--125; LiPuma et al., Lancet 359 (2002), 2002--2003]. Picture supplied by John Govan, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Scotland, UK. See the paper by Langley and others in this issue, on pp. 483--490.

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