By HSI / HSI
Photography: © David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
The stallion selection committee invited 28 showjumping stallions to participate in the performance test after the second viewing. Four well-rounded stallions advanced to the championship round, where the Mattias son Schnaps was crowned champion.
Horse Sport Ireland announce landmark publication to support next generation parentage verification in sport horses using leading edge DNA technology
Horse Sport Ireland and Teagasc were joined by the then Minister of State for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Dr. Pippa Hackett to announce the publication of a method to accurately predict the DNA of stallions using the DNA of their offspring along with the dams of those offspring.
This landmark publication is a significant step towards transitioning from traditional microsatellite markers based on tens of DNA markers to more precise and modern parentage verification using thousands of DNA markers– these new DNA markers are called single nucleotide polymorphisms and (SNP) are state of the art. Moreover, these DNA markers enable parentage discovery as well as verification. DNA information from over 13,000 horses was analysed in the study. The hypothesis of the Irish team of globally renowned geneticists was that because every animal inherits half its DNA from its sire, then the DNA of several progeny can be used to predict (called impute) the DNA of a stallion. The study clearly demonstrated that this is possible and, importantly, having the DNA of the dam also improves the prediction accuracy. This advancement supports the integration of genomic selection into breeding programs as well as ensuring more accurate and efficient parentage verification and discovery.
The study itself can be found at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175173112400209X
Equine hair remains the preference for genotyping sport horses. However, this innovative method enables the imputation of stallion DNA genotypes where there are sufficient stallion offspring and their dams on the SNP genotype platform.
This is the first paper published in a scientific journal to validate the imputation of SNPs in stallions and the first scientific publication published by Horse Sport Ireland as lead author in a scientific journal confirming its commitment to science-based breeding. This article is published ‘open-access’, meaning it is free to access with the intention supporting studbook partners globally in their transition to SNP parentage verification.
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