Among a large collection of Taiwanese soil isolates, a novel Gram-negative, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming, yellow-pigmented bacterial strain, Soil-3-27(T), was isolated from farmland soil in Wu-Feng, Taiwan. The isolate was subjected to a polyphasic study including 16S rRNA gene sequencing, DNA-DNA hybridization, fatty acid analysis and comparative phenotypic characterization. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that the organism belongs to the genus Chryseobacterium. The organism contains menaquinone MK-6 as the predominant isoprenoid quinone and 15 : 0 iso (43 %), 17 : 1 isoomega9c (17.5 %) and 17 : 0 iso 3-OH (16.6 %) as the major fatty acids. Phylogenetically, the closest relatives of strain Soil-3-27(T) are Chryseobacterium daecheongense, Chryseobacterium defluvii and Chryseobacterium taichungense with 96.7-97.2 % sequence similarity. DNA-DNA hybridization showed relatedness values of 8.5-24.2 % with these species. The DNA G+C content is 36.8 mol%. Strain Soil-3-27(T) is clearly distinguishable from other Chryseobacterium species and represents a novel species, for which the name Chryseobacterium taiwanense sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is strain Soil-3-27(T) (=BCRC 17412(T)=IAM 15317(T)=LMG 23355(T)).