Sri Lanka is an island, 65,610 km2 in area situated close to the Southeast corner of the peninsula of India. It has fifteen distinct bioregions different landscapes and wildlife opportunities - with an ancient civilization contemporary to that of the Greeks and Romans and numerous cultural sites of antiquity, including six world heritage sites.

Despite its relatively small size, Sri Lanka possesses a high level of biodiversity. Its climatic and topographical variation have given rise to this rich species diversity, believed to be the highest in Asia in terms of unit land area. A noteworthy feature of Sri Lanka's biodiversity is the remarkable high proportion of endemic species among its flora and fauna: 23% of the flowering plants and 16% of the mammals in the island are endemic.

Sri Lanka is considered as a valuable repository of crop germplasm and agro-biodiversity. It has a rich treasure of rice genes and over 2,800 varieties have been recorded in the country. Besides rice, Sri Lanka is also rich in cereals, including millets, sorghum and maize; legumes, including cowpea, soybean, winged bean, ground nut, pigeon pea; fruits such as citrus, banana, mango, avocado, jak fruit; root and tuber crops; medicinal plants; leafy and other vegetables; spices including pepper; cardamom; betel and chillie. Selection and cultivation of crop plants over several thousands of years by various traditional and modem farming practices and the country ’s eco-edaphic variability are two reasons for high genetic diversity of crops in Sri Lanka.

Much of the species are endemic, a reflection of the island's separation from the Indian subcontinent since the late Mesozoic. This is especially relevant for mammals, amphibians, reptiles and flowering plants. These species are distributed in a wide range of ecosystems which can be broadly categorized into forest, grassland, aquatic, coastal, marine and cultivated. The diversity of ecosystems in the country has resulted in a host of habitats, which contain high genetic diversity.