Neutralino dark matter in supersymmetric models with non-universal scalar mass terms

Abstract Neutralino dark matter is studied in the context of a supergravity scheme where the soft scalar mass terms are not constrained by universality conditions at the grand unification scale. We analyse in detail the consequences of the relaxation of this universality assumption on the supersymmetric parameter space, on the neutralino relic abundance and on the event rate for the direct detection of relic neutralinos.