During a screening for novel and biotechnologically useful actinobacteria, a novel actinobacteria with weak antifungal activity, designated strain NEAU-Spg19(T), was isolated from a soil sample collected from pine forest in Songpinggou, Sichuan, southwest China. The strain was characterized using a polyphasic taxonomic approach which confirmed that it belongs to the genus Streptomyces. Growth occurred at a temperature range of 10-30 A degrees C, pH 5.0-11.0 and NaCl concentrations of 0-5 %. The cell wall peptidoglycan consisted of LL-diaminopimelic acid and glycine. The major menaquinones were MK-9(H-6), MK-9(H-8) and MK-9(H-4). The phospholipid profile contained diphosphatidylglycerol (DPG), phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol. The major fatty acids were iso-C-15:0, iso-C-16:0, and C-16:0. 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity studies showed that strain NEAU-Spg19(T) belongs to the genus Streptomyces with the highest sequence similarities to Streptomyces tauricus JCM 4837(T) (98.6 %) and Streptomyces rectiviolaceus JCM 9092(T) (98.3 %). Some physiological and biochemical properties and low DNA-DNA relatedness values enabled the strain to be differentiated from S. tauricus JCM 4837(T) and S. rectiviolaceus JCM 9092(T). Hence, on the basis of phenotypic and genetic analyses, it is proposed that strain NEAU-Spg19(T) represents a novel species of the genus Streptomyces, for which the name Streptomyces songpinggouensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NEAU-Spg19(T) (=CGMCC 4.7140(T)=DSM 42141(T)).