Compositions and methods for targeting polypeptides to plastids are provided. Compositions comprise plastid transit peptides as well as nucleotide sequences encoding such transit peptides and variants thereof. Compositions further comprise DNA constructs comprising a nucleotide sequence encoding the plastid transit peptide operably linked to a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide of interest. These DNA constructs find use in expression and targeting of the polypeptide of interest to a plastid. Compositions also comprise expression cassettes, vectors, transformed plants, transformed plant cells, and stably transformed plant seeds wherein a polypeptide of interest is targeted to a plastid by the plastid transit peptide of the invention.