An actinomycete strain, HM7(T), was isolated from sandy soil from the banks of the Arvand River, Khoramshahr, Iran. In a study conducted using a polyphasic taxonomic approach, it was found that this strain represented a novel species in the genus Nocardiopsis. Strain HM7(T) had long, branched substrate mycelia and the aerial mycelium completely fragmented to long chains of rod-shaped spores. The cell wall of strain HM7(T) contained meso-diaminopimelic acid, galactose and ribose. The predominant phospholipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine diphosphatidylglycerol, and phosphatidylcholine. The main menaquinones were MK-10(H(2)), MK-10(H(4)), MK-10(H(0)) and MK-9(H(2)). Strain HM7(T) showed the highest degree of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity with Nocardiopsis sinuspersici UTMC 00102(T) (99.8 %) and Nocardiopsis quinghaiensis YIM 28A4(T) (99.3 %), but differed significantly from these type strains based on DNA-DNA hybridization data (37.6 and 38.9 % relatedness, respectively). Physiological, biochemical and phenotypic characteristics allowed strain HM7(T) to be differentiated from related species. On the basis of results from phenotypic and phylogenetic analyses, strain HM7(T) is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Nocardiopsis, for which the name Nocardiopsis arvandica sp. nov. is proposed; the type strain of this species is HM7(T) ( = UTMC 00103(T) = DSM 45278(T) = CCUG 58831(T)).