**1. Introduction**

It is well known that plant pathogenic fungi can cause a tremendous loss of global agricultural production [1]. Despite synthetic fungicides being effective and playing an indispensable role against pathogenic fungi, the available antifungal agents are far from satisfactory as a result of several drawbacks, such as severe drug resistance, drug-related toxicity, and many other problems [2]. Therefore, novel antifungal agents and antagonistic microorganisms are needed to effectively control the fungal diseases

of agricultural crops. Natural products and their derivatives, in particular secondary metabolites derived from *Streptomyces*, have always been valuable sources for lead discovery in medicinal and agricultural chemistry because their novel scaffolds can provide new modes of action [3,4]. Members of the genus *Streptomyces* species are gram-positive, filamentous, and sporulating actinobacteria containing a number of biosynthetic gene clusters, indicating their potential ability to produce large numbers of secondary metabolites with diverse biological activities [5,6], and they represent the source of 75% of clinically useful antibiotics presently available [7]. Many *Streptomyces* species have been successfully developed as commercial biofungicides based on *Streptomyces griseoviridis* [8]. Thus, *Streptomyces* are still an attractive and indispensable resource for drug discovery.

The rhizosphere is an environment where pathogenic and beneficial microorganisms constitute a major influential force on plant growth and health, which differs from the bulk soil [9]. Plants not only provide nutrients for microbial growth but also change the microbial diversity and increase the numbers of bioactive microorganisms in the rhizosphere. The rhizosphere provides an excellent place for pursuing actinobacteria producing novel antibiotics [10,11]. During our search for antagonistic actinobacteria from the rhizosphere soil of wheat (*Triticum aestivum* L.), the strain NEAU-H2<sup>T</sup> was isolated, which showed broad inhibitory activities against phytopathogenic fungi. Based on the polyphasic taxonomy analysis, this strain was classified as representative of a novel species in the genus *Streptomyces.* In addition, the secondary metabolites of this strain were investigated by spectroscopic and genomic analyses.
