Now Accepting Graduate Students
Cocoa Research Centre, The UWI, is pleased to collaborate with the UWI Faculty of Food and Agriculture, to deliver two new graduate programmes by research (MPhil and PhD).
Our overall goal is to produce a cadre of professional researchers, who can operate in an interdisciplinary research environment to support the growth and development of the regional fine cocoa industries, while producing value employment opportunities within the new knowledge economy.
Some of our current research interests include:
Conservation of genetic resources - evaluation for traits of importance within the International Cocoa Genebank
Molecular marker identification using GWAS or QTL mapping for traits of importance
Genomic selection in cocoa
Dwarfing rootstocks for cocoa
Identifying and characterizing neotropical badnaviruses
Managing witches’ broom disease and black pod disease of cocoa
Mitigating Climate change impacts in cocoa
Designing farms to improve carbon capture
Carbon sequestration through Biochar
Mitigation cadmium and aluminum in cocoa
Improving quality through post harvest processing- fermentation and drying
Automation of post harvest processing
Applications for The UWI St. Augustine postgraduate admissions for the 2025/2026 academic year, are currently open for Semester I, with the deadline for most programs being July 30, 2025.
BeReady, BeUWI!