MINISTER of State for Land Use and Biodiversity Pippa Hackett joined Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) at the Dublin Horse Show on Thursday to launch the ‘2024 Irish Draught Horse Genetic Diversity Report’.

The comprehensive report, prepared by HSI Geneticist Dr Jennifer Doyle, provides a detailed overview of the genetic diversity of the horses registered within the Irish Draught Horse Studbook.

Through this report, HSI aims to provide valuable insights that will inform future breeding decisions and support breeders with their existing breeding programmes.

HSI also marked the publication of other Horse Sport Ireland research in the prestigious publication ‘Animal’. The paper, Imputation of SNP gentotypes in Sport Horses, is a landmark piece of research conducted by HSI Geneticist, Dr Doyle, along with HSI’s Head of Breeding Dr Sonja Egan and Teagasc’s Dr Donagh Berry.

It explains how HSI have developed a method to accurately predict the SNP genotype of stallions using data from their offspring.

This study is a significant step towards transitioning from traditional microsatellite markers to more precise SNP-based parentage verification in sport horse breeding.

By analyzing genomic data from over 13,000 horses, HSI have demonstrated that including both offspring and dam genotypes greatly improves imputation accuracy. This advancement supports the integration of genomic selection into breeding programmes, ensuring more accurate and efficient parentage verification.

The research and its publication in Animal, highlights the possibility of imputation of genotypes within the sport horse sector, in a similar fashion to the bovine herd. In even simpler terms, a stallion’s genetic make up can be predicted from that of its offspring and their dams.