Having a scientific basis for breeding can allow breeders to make more informed selection decisions as horse breeding and equestrian sports evolve. | Photo: iStock

That seems to be especially true for horses at the highest level of competition, said Gabriel Rovere, PhD, of the Animal Breeding and Genomic Centre at Wageningen University in Wageningen, The Netherlands, and the Aarhus University Centre for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, in Tjele, Denmark.

Few studies have analyzed the genetic correlation between dressage and show jumping with a significant amount of competition data, said Rovere. “In general, low genetic correlations between both disciplines have been reported,” he said. “But in studbooks that specialized the horses in either one discipline or the other, the higher the level of competition, the closer to zero the genetic correlation. In some cases, it was even unfavorable.”

Rovere and his fellow researchers analyzed the performance data for more than 100,000 horses competing in show jumping, dressage, or both, between 1992 and 2013