Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago holds an outsized place in cacao history as the birthplace of the Trinitario type — a heterogeneous hybrid population that arose when Criollo plantings, damaged by an eighteenth-century crop failure, were interbred with introduced Amelonado Forastero. The resulting Criollo x Forastero material spread worldwide and remains central to fine-flavour cacao. Although national output is modest today, the islands' research legacy is substantial.

On Trinidad, cacao is grown on central and southern estates, the historic 'Trinitario heartland'. The island is the source of the Imperial College Selection (ICS) clones chosen by F.J. Pound in the 1930s, still widely propagated internationally. Tobago has its own estate tradition; Roxborough in the east was a noted cocoa estate before the industry declined after the 1970s, and single-estate production has since been revived there.

Trinidad hosts the Cocoa Research Centre of the University of the West Indies, which curates the International Cocoa Genebank, Trinidad — one of the largest field genebanks of cacao in the world and a key reference collection underpinning the modern genetic-cluster taxonomy of Motamayor et al. (2008). Estate beans are traditionally well-fermented, with raisin, red-fruit and molasses notes.