Cacao flower microbiome under pollinator exclusion across farming systems in Ghana

This project characterises bacterial and fungal communities associated with cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) flowers collected across multiple farms in Ghana. Amplicon sequencing was performed targeting the bacterial 16S rRNA gene V4 region using primers 515F/806R and the fungal ITS1 region using primers ITS1F/ITS2. Samples include flowers exposed to natural pollination and flowers protected from visitors in a pollinator exclusion experiment across different farming systems. The dataset provides microbial community profiles of cacao flower surfaces and associated metadata.