New technology aims to reduce equine inbreeding

The idea is to give owners of mares and stallions more information when choosing possible pairings

- LUCY ELDER

NEW technology aimed at reducing inbreeding and designed to help give breeders more information when looking for a suitable stallion for their mares is up and running.

The online tool Checkmate has been launched by Equinome, which researches and develops genomic tools for the thoroughbred industry.

The tool is designed to check potential thoroughbred matings in real time for inbreeding risk.

The mare owner or breeder submits a blood sample and Equinome generates a genetic profile for the mare, which is then uploaded onto the Checkmate platform.

The breeder has a secure login, which is used to access profiles of all the mares they have submitted and "match" each mare in hypothetical matings against a selection of up to 10 sires from a database of more than 400 stallions.

It calculates the potential impact of each mating on a foal, returning a risk score of inbreeding and flagging highrisk matings.

STALLION PROFILES

STALLION owners and managers can submit stallion profiles, which will be uploaded onto the database.