The common evolutionary history of badnaviruses and banana

•The diversity of interactions in badnaviruses infecting banana have resulted in specific processes of co-evolution.•Banana badnaviruses are polyphyletic suggesting banana as a possible host plant of the badnavirus ancestor.•We propose a model tracing the co-evolution of both badnaviruses and banana.•The model sheds light on 3 distinct virus-host interactions on the banana evolution scale.

Recent plant genome sequencing efforts have revealed myriad viral sequences suggesting a cryptic interaction between both partners. Interestingly, no integration step has ever been reported as an obligatory step in the life cycle of plant viruses. Circular dsDNA viruses belonging to the family Caulimoviridae are the most abundant among integrated plant viral sequences. In this review, we describe how this hitherto hidden interaction could inform the evolutionary history of both partners badnaviruses and banana plants.