Combining adjacent polygons sharing similar trait into single polygon using ArcGIS Desktop?

Try the Dissolve tool. From the help:

Use the Dissolve tool when you want to aggregate features based on a specified attribute or attributes. For example, you could take a feature class containing sales data collected on a county-by-county basis and use Dissolve to create a feature class containing contiguous sales regions based on the name of the salesperson in each county. Dissolve creates the sales regions by removing the boundaries between counties represented by the same salesperson.

_{(source: arcgis.com)}

To avoid creating multi-part features, uncheck the "Create multipart features" box.

You could try MultipartToSinglePart.

I am not sure if it will preserve all attribute information but it is quick to test.