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The relationship between haemoglobin polymorphism and haematological pattern were studied in Gentile di Puglia, the Apulia Merino native breed. In a sample of 292 individuals, on five different farms, alpha- and beta-globin genetic polymorphism was investigated. A remarkable polymorphism was detected especially at alpha-globin gene where the variations concerned both the quality of the gene product and gene expression. Triplicated and quadruplicated alpha-globin genes were observed in 8.6% and 1.2% of the alpha-haplotypes respectively. At beta-globin (HBB) locus, predominance of HBB(B) allele was found in all flocks, while HBB(A) overall frequency was around 11.2%. Moreover, the effect of genotypes at globin systems on haematological data was evaluated on 289 animals. A significant effect was detected for HBB locus on haematocrit (HCT) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV), with decreasing HCT and MCV for decreasing number of HBB(A) alleles in the genotype. The opposite trend was observed for mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration. The advances presented by this paper give reasons for inferring that BB genotypes can be expected to be more resilient to climatic stress and to local parasites.

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The black or rarely roan Murgese is a mesomorph horse, mainly reared in Apulia, recently selected for the saddle. The first official registry of Murgese was established in 1926. All the existing Murgese horses can be traced back to a small number of founders (46 founder mares and 9 stallions). This work aims to monitor the genetic structure of the actual population by analysing the available genealogical information from 2708 animals and a data-set containing 563 typing records of twelve microsatellites. Inbreeding coefficients were estimated for the whole sample and for the animals born from 1992 to 1999. A total of 23 generations were found. The average inbreeding coefficient was 0.0165 for the last three generations, whereas inbreeding was below 2% in animals born in the 92-99 period. The contribution of founders was unbalanced. The overall F IS coefficient estimation was 0.025 and suggests that mating is generally at random in the population. However, some statistics obtained from this study, i.e. the inbreeding coefficient higher than 0.015 in the 70 animals of the 19 th , 20 th , and 21 st generations, should induce breeders to more attention in planning mating.