The region's countries are the centres of origin and diversity of many plant and animal species. Many of them, such as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, are megadiverse because of their great wealth of species; especially birds, butterflies, reptiles and flowering plants. This is in addition to the biological and ecological assets of the region's rural areas, which contain four of the eight centres of origin of cultivated plants, according to Vavilov.6 Possession of a diversity of genetic resources is vital for adapting to the new conditions generated by climate change, such as drought stress, temperature change and extreme variation, diseases and pests and increased salinity.