There are a huge amount of microbial resources in desertification region of Xinjiang China,due to its special environment and less human interference.But we can only obtain the cultivated bacteria form environment less than 0.01-10%by using traditional pure cultivating method at present,most of them are in viable but non-culturable(VBNC)state and have not been recognized,more cant be used by us.As a huge microbial resources in nature,identification and functional exploitation of VBNC bacteria resources deserve our attention.This study focused on the resuscitation and isolation of VBNC state bacteria from desertification soil samples collected from Xinjiang region using most probable number(MPN)culture system based on resuscitation promoting factor(Rpf).Totally 60 strains were isolated,including 48 VBNC bacteria,which enriched the laboratorys microbial resources.The VBNC isolates belonged to 16 different genera(Bacillus,Brevibacillus,Staphylococcus,Brevibacterium,Arthrobacter,Kocuriac,Microbacterium,Cellulosimicrobium,Rhodococcus,Streptomyces,Enterobacter,Escherichia,Brevundimonas,Pseudomonas,Ensifer and Herbaspirillum).Among these isolates,Bacillus was the genus with largest numbers(40%);and Actinomyces was the group with most abundant variety(7 genera).The preliminary investigation results indicated that the VBNC strains isolated from Xinjiang desertification soils have significant diversity and wide distribution.14 of the isolates were considered novel taxa by current research.One of them,a new taxa,the strain DSXY973,has been comfirmed with polyphasic taxonomy methods including morphology,physiological and biochemical tests,chemotaxonomy,molecular characteristics analysis and so on.This study also indicated that Rpf can effectively resuscitate not only the high G+C content Gram-positive organisms,Actinomycetes,but also the low G+C content Gram-positive organisms including the most sensitive genus Bacillus.Furthermore,Rpf also stimulates the growth of several other Gram-negative organisms,such as the genus of the Pseudomonas,Ensifer and Herbaspirillum,and so on.These results were the first reported on VBNC state bacteria found from Xinjiang desert soils.In a word,this research provides scientific basis for the resuscitation and isolation of VBNC bacteria resources from natural environment by using Rpf.It also provides a new insight and method of the development of novel species and further application study of VBNC bacteria.