IntroductionThe common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is one of the most ancient legumes and one of the five cultivated species of the genus Phaseolus (Broughton et al., 2003). The common bean originated in Latin America and has become a major food for human consumption (Broughton et al., 2003), providing vital nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals in diets in many developing countries, especially in Africa (Broughton et al., 2003). Globally, the annual production of green and dry beans is 17 million tons (FAO, 2010) and is almost twice that of the second most important legume, chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) (Gepts et al., 2008). The common bean, a self-pollinated crop, is a true diploid (n = 11) with a small genome of 588 megabase pairs (Arumuganthan and Earle, 1991).Transposable elements (TEs) are discrete regions of DNA that can move within genomes (Baranek et al., 2012). TEs are important for phylogenetic analysis because they can change their genomic location, creating genomic diversity (Baranek et al., 2012). Recent studies have shown that, depending on its function, a TE in a gene may be conserved in different plant species, subspecies, and cultivars (Xu and Ramakrishna, 2008). TEs can be classified into two major groups according to their mode of transposition: DNA transposons (group I), which replicate directly via a DNA intermediate, and retrotransposons (group II), which replicate through an RNA intermediary (Casacuberta and Santiago, 2003). Retrotransposons play important roles in plant genomes according to genome size (increasing genome size), structure, evolution, variable copy number, and random distribution (Kumar and Bennetzen, 1999). Furthermore, retrotransposons are the most abundant and widely distributed mobile genetic element in eukaryotic genomes and show polymorphism within and between species (Kumar and Bennetzen, 1999). Retrotransposons comprise 35% of the common bean genome (Schmutz et al., 2014). Retrotransposons can be divided into two primary groups according to the presence or absence of a long terminal repeat (LTR): LTR and non-LTR retrotransposons. LTR retrotransposons predominate in plant genomes and can be used as molecular markers due to their ubiquitous distribution, abundant copy number, high heterogeneity, and random nature of insertional polymorphisms resulting from different retrotransposon