The ferric iron absorption is one of the most important limiting factors of bacterial growth of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae. It has been previously speculated that r p f F xoo might be involved in the ferric iron metabolism of the pathogen. In the present study, deltar p f F xoo, a gene deletion mutant, was generated from the wild-type strain PXO99A of Xoo through the homologous recombination, and Fe content was assayed using flame atomic absorption in PXO99A and deltar p f F xoo. The results indicated that the recovery was 99.7% and the relative standard deviation was 1.89 under optimized AAS operating conditions. The increase in Fe absorption in PXO99A and deltar p f F xoo was observed with the increasing time. However, the ferric content of deltar p f F xoo was significantly lower than that of PXO99A (P < 0.05). It is suggested that r p f F xoo is involved in iron metabolism in Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae.