Genetic analysis of the Hungarian population of endangered Hucul horses

Abstract

The population genetic evaluation of the Hungarian Hucul horse population was performed based on pedigree records. Herd book data of registered Hucul horses available up to 2016 were analysed using ENDOG (Gutierrez and Goyache 2005) and POPREP (Groeneveld et al. 2009) on the whole population (WP) as well as on the reference stock (RS) (breeding stock registered in 2016). Inbreeding coefficients were 5.57% (WP) and 7.18% (RS). Average relatedness was 10.39% in WP and higher in RS (12.67%). Effective population size was 52.32. Generation interval was 13.01 years for WP and 10.99 years for RS. The values for equivalent complete generations were 6.07 and 8.75, for the maximum number of generations 14.11 and 19.16, and for the number of full generations traced 3.77 and 5.50 for WP and RS, respectively. The effective number of founders (f_e) was 23 both for WP and RS. The effective number of ancestors (f_a) was 20 in WP and lower in RS (16). The f_a/f_e ratio was 0.869 in WP and 0.696 in RS. Founder genome equivalent (f_g) was 9.618 in WP and 5.790 in RS. The f_g/f_e ratio was 0.481 in WP and 0.361 in RS. The study revealed that both the inbreeding coefficient and the average relatedness were high. The above mentioned ratios indicated loss of genetic diversity in the Hungarian Hucul population.