Currently,various porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) variants emerged worldwide with dif-ferent genetic characteristics and pathogenicity,increasing the difficulty of PRRS control.In this study,a PRRSV strain named HBap4-2018 was isolated from swine herds suffering severe respiratory disease with high morbidity in Hebei Province of China in 2018.The genome of HBap4-2018 is 15,003 nucleotides in length,and compared with NADC30-1ike PRRSV,nsp2 of HBap4-2018 has an additional continuous deletion of five amino acids.Phylogenetic analysis based on complete genome and ORF5 showed that HBap4-2018 belonged to lineage 8 of PRRSV-2,which was characterized by highly variable genome.However,HBap4-2018 was classified into lineage 1 based on phylogenetic analysis of nsp2,sharing higher amino acid homology (85.3%-85.5%) with NADC30-1ike PRRSV.Further analysis suggested that HBap4-2018 was a novel natural recombinant PRRSV with three recombinant fragments in the genome,of which highly pathogenic PRRSV (HP-PRRSV) served as the major parental strains,while NADC30-1ike PRRSV served as the minor parental strains.Five recombination break points were identified in nsp2,nsp3,nsp5,nsp9 and ORF6,respectively,presenting a novel recombinant pattern in the genome.Piglets inoculated with HBap4-2018 presented typical clinical signs with a mortality rate of 60%.High levels of viremia and obvious macroscopic and histopathological lesions in the lungs were observed,revealing the high pathogenicity of HBap4-2018 in piglets.