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Charles R. Clement mazonia is, arguably, the world's most important cen-ter of biodiversity. The region is also an unrecognized but important center of plant domestication. The lack of recognition may be explained by Amazonia's small contribution to world agriculture, a general lack of knowledge about Amazonian biogeography (only recently being filled in), and a bias on the part of crop evolutionists and geographers toward annual crops, such as maize (Zea mays L.), cassava (Manihot esculenta Krantz), and beans (Phaseolus spp.), because of their prominence in mod-ern agriculture. Nicolai I. Vavilov (1951), the Russian geneticist and crop geographer who proposed the first complete world-wide model for crop genetic distribution, adhered to this bias and did not recognize Amazonia. But the geographic patterns of genetic variation in perennial fruit species sup-port recognition of a center of crop diversity in …