The characteristics are as described for the genus and the species (Vauterin et al. 1995) extended with phylogenetic data from this study. The species can be clearly distinguished from other xanthomonads by multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) and whole genome sequence analysis with members having more than 98% ANI with the type strain. SDS-PAGE protein and FAME profiles have been shown to be distinguishing for some pathovars (Aritua et al. 2007; Vauterin et al. 1992; Yang et al. 1993) by the presence of metabolic activity on the carbon substrates d-psicose and l-glutamic acid, and by a lack of metabolic activity on the carbon substrates N-acetyl-d-galactosamine, l-arabinose, a-d-lactose, d-melibiose, P-methyl-d-glucoside, l-rhamnose, d-sorbitol, formic add, d-galactonic acid lactone, d-galacturonic acid, d-gluconic acid, d-glucuronic acid, p-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, a-ketovaleric acid, quinic acid, glucuronamide, l-asparagine, l-histidine, l-phenylalanine, urocanic acid, inosine, uridine, thymidine, dl-a-glycerol phosphate, glucose 1-phosphate, and glucose 6-phosphate. The G+C content is between 63.1 and 63.6 mol% as calculated from whole-genome sequence data.

The type strain is X. vasicola pv. holcicola LMG 736 (= CFBP 2543 = ICMP 3103 = NCPPB 2417).