The structure of ice nucleation (IN) genes was compared among 20 strains of Erwinia herbicola-group bacterium of plant- and insect-origin including E. herbicola M1 (IceE) and E. ananas IN10 (inaA) that had been previously reported. When the DNAs of N-domain or C-domain were amplified, PCR products with similar size were obtained in all strains, while the size of the PCR products from the whole genes containing the R domain varied remarkably within a range of 3.8 kb to 4.4 kb. RFLP analysis of the IN genes revealed that the size of the R-domains were varied within the region from the PvuII site to DraI site, and 20 IN genes were classified into 12 groups. Furthermore, all the strains identified as E. ananas based on six bacteriological properties were different from those of E. herbicola. These results suggest that the IN genes may be distributed only in E. ananas strains among "herbicola group bacteria.".