INSERTIONAL POLYMORPHISMS OF MINIATURE INVERTED-REPEAT TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS (STOWAWAY- MITEs) IN INTRONS OF SUGAR BEET.

: Sugar beet has high sucrose content and it accounts for most of the sugar production in the world after sugar cane. European Union is the world’s largest sugar beet producer, which accounts for 50% production in the world. A panel of 12 genotypes of Beta vulgaris cultivars of sugar beet and fodder beet was used to identify polymorphisms of Stowaway miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs). In sugar beet DNA is highly polymorphic and highly variant due to its highly repetitive DNA sequences which account for 64% of the genome. Transposable Elements (TEs) are mainly classified into Class I retrotransposons and Class II DNA transposons. MITEs belong to class II, they are non-autonomous TEs. MITEs are the most abundant group of class II elements in the plant genome. Stowaway MITEs are derived from and mobilized by elements of the Tc1/ mariner superfamily and are one of the significant sources of variation in the sugar beet. MITE copies inserted within introns can be exploited as potential intron length polymorphism (ILP) markers. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) can detect ILPs with primers anchored in exon sequences flanking the target introns. Here, we designed primers for 70 BvSto (Beta vulgaris Stowaway-like) MITE insertion sites within introns along the sugar beet genome and validated them as candidate ILP markers, to develop a set of markers for genotyping the sugar beet.