The Genera Babuvirus and Badnavirus in Asia

In the plant virus world, there are six genera of plant viruses with dsDNA genomes and six genera with ssDNA (Fauquet et al., 2005). The dsDNA viruses are comprised of 4 genera in the Caulimoviridae, the genus Badnavirus and the genus Tungrovirus. The ssDNA viruses are comprised of four genera in Geminiviridae, and the two genera Nanovirus and Babuvirus in the Nanoviridae. The genera Babuvirus and Badnavirus are not well studied in Asia. However, we recognized the significance of two species, Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) in the genus Babuvirus and Banana streak virus (BSV) in the genus Badnavirus, during the survey of banana viruses in Asia. Their main characters will be introduced in this mini-review.