PROFESSOR Alan Fahey of University College Dublin will facilitate a two-year research programme into the genetic improvement in show jumping horses, following the awarding of a €235,906 grant to UCD by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, TD.

The announcement was made as part of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s (DAFM) 2019 Competitive Call for Research on Thursday, where the minister awarded almost €20 million in funding across 38 research projects.

Fahey will lead the two-year project entitled ‘Genetic improvement of the sport horse population for show jumping in Ireland’ in conjunction with Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) and using the HSI database.

“I am delighted. I’m not sure that the sport horse industry has ever gotten this much money for research before,” Fahey told The Irish Field. “We couldn’t do this without HSI and Alison Corbally, they are the industry partners, Alison is the point of contact and we are using the HSI database.

“HSI already have a genetic evaluation that they run annually and is released on their website. We would like to form R&D (research and development) composing to that. We want to start looking at what other countries are doing and where we should be benchmarking ourselves.

“And maybe find new traits that we could start including in that evaluation that can help us, and the breeders,” Fahey said, adding: “Part of this project, and it is something I am passionate about, it trying to get this through to the industry.

“We will be distributing the results through stakeholders meetings, and at the annual HSI conference. That is really important, and it is important to get feedback.”

Fahey expects the project to hit the ground running in the new year and is currently putting job descriptions together for a post-doctorate scientist and a research assistant to assist in the research.