Finding ‘ the long-lost ’ Croatian Lipizzan mare families

© Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources


Introduction
Lipizzan horse breed is composed of eight stallion bloodlines and 63 mare families (Lipizzan International Federation, 2001) of which one stallion bloodline (Tulip) and 16 mare families (Czirka,Ercel,Traviata,Margit,Manczi,502 Moszgo Perla,Rendes,Miss Wood,Fruska,Mima/Nana,Alka,Karolina,Munja, have Croatian origin (Čačić, 2008).Today only six mare families are represented in Croatian breeding.Lipizzan horses were first introduced to Croatia in 1800 by earl Andrija Jankovich-Bésán (Steinhausz, 1924).He founded stallion bloodline named Tulip and six mare families Czirka, Ercel, Traviata, Margit, Manczi and 502 Moszgo Perla.Mare families Czirka and Ercel are today present only in South African Republic (SAR) Lipizzan population (Čačić, 2011).Following the political situation in Croatia and Europe in 1929 earl Elemer Jankovich-Bésán migrated to Hungary where he stayed until 1944 then moved to Bavaria (Jankovich-Bésán, 2010), in 1947moved to England and in 1948finally to South African Republic (Dalglish, 2011).Along with his family he took 14 Lipizzan horses (nine mares with three foals belonging to Czirka and Ercel mare family and two 2-year old stallions) that he transported to the Mooi River farm in SAR.Those 14 Lipizzan horses were nucleus that provided today South African Lipizzan population.Investigating breeding records of Lipizzan South African Center it is identified that present SAR Lipizzan population is composed of Czirka and Ercel mare families and that these two Croatian mare families were foundation of Lipizzan breeding in SAR since 1948 until today (Lipizzan South African Center, Breeding books).Since mare families Czirka and Ercel were transported from Croatia to SAR they disappeared not only from Croatian Lipizzan breeding lines but from the Europe breeding.These Croatian mare families represent valuable gene pool that will enrich Lipizzan genetic variability.The aim of this study was to characterize maternal genetic structure of SAR Lipizzan population as well as to compare them with Croatian Lipizzan population.The haplotype network was performed using PopArt 1.7 (Bandelt et al., 1999).

Results and discussion
The Considering the small size of the Lipizzan population, inclusion of new haplotypes will greatly enrich breed's maternal genetic diversity.This is the first genetic analysis of SAR Lipizzan population and it provides us insight into results that will be obtained with future analysis of whole genome.

Conclusions
Old Surely the future analysis on the whole genome using SNP chip or WGS will give us better understanding of the connection between two populations and will allow us to compare the SAR Lipizzan population with the other European and world Lipizzan populations.

Finding
Figure 1 Polymorphic nucleotide positions within 648-bp fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region found in 249 South African and 50 Croatian Lipizzan horses.Nucleotide positions are numbered according to the reference sequence GenBank X79547 (Xu and Arnason, 1994) presented as H1.H2-H6 are South African haplotypes, H7 is shared haplotype and H8-H47 are Croatian haplotypes

Figure 2
Figure 2Median-joining network of 46 Lipizzan haplotypes.Little dashes represent the number of mutations historical records saying that South African Lipizzan horses originate from Croatian breeding lines are confirmed by reviewing the SAR Lipizzan herd books.Croatian mare families Czirka and Ercel are foundation of current SAR Lipizzan breeding.As a first genetic analysis of maternal families, it is visible that SAR population is close to Croatian Lipizzan population.Introduction of the longlost Croatian mare families will have great contribution to the maternal genetic diversity of Lipizzan population.