Different types of viral infections in plants are great threat in sustainable agriculture as the worldwide demand for food is increasing day by day. Rapid transmissibility of virion particles, change in climatic condition and global trading cause sudden spreading of diseases within a vast area. Geminiviruses, belongs to the family Geminiviridae, infect a wide range of economically important plants and attribute a major crop loss all over the world. Geminiviruses are single-stranded DNA viruses, having twinned icosahedral structure, cause diseases like
bright yellow mosaic, yellow mosaic, yellow mottle, leaf curling etc.
Geminivirus interferes host cell machinery with the modification of gene expression, cell signaling, metabolic reprogramming etc. Being transmitted through insect vectors, those spread into different hosts like tomato, cotton, maize, potato, beet, wheat, cassava etc. Based on the genetics, phylogenetic relationships, host interaction and insect vectors, geminiviruses are categorized into
Becurtovirus, Begmovirus, Capulavirus, Curtovirus, Eragrovirus, Grablovirus, Masterovirus, Topocuvirus and
Turncurtovirus [
1,
2]. Among these, begomovirus are one of the largest group, transmitted through whiteflies (
Bamisia tabaci) which sit abaxial surface of the leaf and suck phloem sap. These tiny Hemipteran insect vectors are the members of Aleyrodidae family. Some considerable genetic and behavioral variations have been found in different haplotypes of whitefly vectors. On the basis of genetic variation in cytochrome oxidase unit, those groups of population have been considered as a cryptic species complex where the members are reproductively isolated. Several cryptic species like Middle East-Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1), Asia-I, Asia I-India, Asia II-1, Asia II-5, Asia II-7, Asia II-8, Asia II-11, and China-3, Mediterranean (MED), NW1, NW2 are reported already. Co-adaptation of those variants may influence on transmission efficiency [
3,
4]. Begomovirus mainly infects dicot plants bearing edible vegetables, distributed within tropical, sub-tropical and mild temperate climatic zone. The business oriented production of vegetables improves food security, income opportunities, poverty reduction along with regional development but the annual economic loss from this viral disease affects livelihood directly [
5]. Additionally, some non-edible economically important plants like tobacco, cotton are also infected with the begomoviruses. Abutilon mosaic disease, cucumber mosaic disease, sweet potato leaf curl disease, cotton leaf curl disease, bean golden mosaic disease, tomato curl disease, chilli leaf curl disease etc. are commonly found in our country [
6]. In spite of utilizing the host DNA polymerase having proof-reading activity, begomoviruses exhibit significant level of genetic variation and nucleotide substitution. Frequent recombination and re-assortment of the viral genome, increase their adaptive fitness to invade wide range of hosts in the different ecological niche [
7]. All those events compel to control the begomovirus as per the requirement for preventing financial condition of the countries from this viral infection. For this, it is important to understand the biology of this viral transmission critically. Most of the literatures have represented the characterization of begomovirus, their genomic variation and diversification, infectivity in different plants, several gene expression profiles in plants etc. However, very little information is available about the whitefly mediated transmission of begomovirus together with the respective host response. In this review, we have focused on the genomic structure and mechanism of transmission of begomovirus, interaction among plant-vector-pathogen required for viral infection and specific stress responses inside the plant body with some other aspects.