Attempts have been made to characterize infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) isolates collected from different parts of India during 1993 to 1999. Phylogenetic analysis was performed on a sequence generated by cycle sequencing comprising the variable region of the VP2 gene of 14 isolates. Indian IBDV isolates had divergence of 0.2 to 4.3% at nucleotide and 0 to 2.2% at amino acid levels among themselves. Nine nucleotide changes were found in Indian IBDV field isolates, resulting in the four specific amino acid changes at 222P-A, 256V-I, 294L-I and 299N-S, reported regularly in very virulent isolates. One of the Indian IBDV isolates, UP1/99, had change D to N at position 212 in the first hydrophilic region. The serine-rich heptapeptide sequence 'SWSASGS' was conserved in all the isolates. Phylogenetically, all Indian field isolates were found to be closely related to very virulent IBDV isolates from Europe, Japan, China and Israel.