GENETIC PARAMETERS IN THE BARDIGIANO HORSE BREED POPULATION

The Bardigiano is an Italian native horse breed with excellent resilience, well adapted to mountain areas. In 1977 the Bardigiano studbook was founded to improve the use of this breed for riding purposes while maintaining its distinctive features. To facilitate the conversion of the Bardigiano to an equestrian horse type, in 1992 one Arabian stallion was included in the breeding program. Since 1977, body measurements (height at wither, chest girth, cannon bone circumference, shoulder length) have been recorded and, in 1987 conformation, attitude and gait-related traits, evaluated as 10 grading traits and 10 linear scores, were also introduced in the horse’s assessment. Therefore, for nearly 3,000 out of 5,135 horses with body measurements, additional traits were also available. The 10 grading traits, measured on a scale from 1 (extremely undesirable) to 10 (excellent), are summed and used to calculate a global score, which is used to approve stallions for breeding. This study aimed in assessing the suitability of body measurements and grading traits in the genetic evaluation. The heritabilities and genetic correlations were calculated by univariate and bivariate animal models, using a statistical model that accounted for: gender, generation, horse’s age at evaluation, and percentage of Arabian blood. The body measurements showed heritabilities ranging from 0.23 (length of shoulder) to 0.64 (height at wither). The conformation-attitude traits displayed heritabilities from 0.13 to 0.31, whereas, in the case of gait-related traits, the heritability was equal to 0.10. The genetic correlations between the global score and body measurements were moderate to high, ranging from 0.30 to 0.87. The highest genetic correlations were shown between body measurements and the grading trait “development” (0.55 to 0.97). We conclude that body measurements can be used as effective indicators of conformation and attitude-related traits in the Bardigiano breed. Further studies combining body measurements in morphometric indices are suggested to optimise the breeding strategy