Plant viruses cause severe diseases leading to enormous crop loss. The present day viral researches of economic plants are centered on identification of virus, molecular characterization and management of viral discases. Till date more than thousand viruses have been classified into several families. It is desirable to know about the different virus families along with their type genus and/or important genus. But due to an enormous volume of literature published on this aspect, it becomes difficult to study all of them. Hence the present review has highlighted the salient features of the major plant viruses which have been classified at the family level. Most of the virus families have been discussed with important/type genus of each family. Some viruses which could not be placed in any family have been grouped as 'no family". Importance of molecular data, immunological data and data on protein configuration of coat proteins along with bioinformatics and its predictive power have been highlighted.