The horse is prized for characteristics like heat tolerance and endurance, as well as its unique appearance, with a dish-shaped facial profile, wide-set eyes, an arched neck and a high tail carriage. This is particularly evident in populations from Bahrain and Syria, which suggests these are some pretty old populations.” What we found was that in the area where this breed originates – likely the near East region, but we don’t know exactly – there’s a healthy level of diversity. “Arabian horse breeders, in particular, know their horse’s bloodlines many generations back.
“The Arabian horse has a special mystique due to the long recorded history of the breed,” Brooks said. The data set was also expanded using information from past studies on other breeds, which included Thoroughbreds, Persian Arabian, Turkemen and Straight Egyptians. The samples were anonymized for data analysis purposes, except to note the horse’s location and categorizing them as endurance competition, flat course racing or show horses. The process was a lot of effort, she said, in part due to traveling to collect the Arabians’ blood and hair samples, as well as natural delays in working with international colleagues to collect and ship other samples. The research, published June 16 in the journal “Scientific Reports,” was conducted over an 8-year period, beginning in 2014 before Brooks made the move from Cornell to UF. The group collected and examined DNA samples from 378 Arabian horses from Qatar, Iran, UAE, Poland, USA, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and Canada. A study involving Arabian horses from 12 countries found that some populations maintained a larger degree of genetic diversity and that the breed did not contribute genetically to the modern-day Thoroughbred, contrary to popular thought.Īn international team of scientists was led by Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine's Doug Antczak, the Dorothy Havemeyer McConville Professor of Equine Medicine at the Baker Institute for Animal Health Andy Clark, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor in Cornell's department of molecular biology and genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences and the University of Florida’s Samantha Brooks, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of animal sciences and formerly the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
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