The quest to breed a better horse has led Thoroughbred breeders to try many unorthodox theories and systems, all with mixed results.

To date, the success (or lack thereof) of most of these tools has been anecdotal, with no way to quantify whether a horse's achievements were due to one or more of these breeding aides. Now, thanks to the rapidly developing advances within DNA collection and testing, the quest for a better-bred Thoroughbred is becoming more scientific than theoretical in nature.

That was the focus of the first Thoroughbred Pedigree and Genetics Symposium in Lexington, Ky., on Oct. 11, as about 175 industry professionals heard presentations from some of the leaders in the field of equine genetics research. The seminar was presented by The Blood-Horse and the Pedigree Consultants firm of Alan Porter and Byron Rogers.

Much of the groundwork for current advances within equine DNA traces back to the Equine Genome Project, a cooperative effort in more than 20 countries that set out to define the genome–the DNA sequence–of the domestic horse. The genome is the total amount of genetic information in the horse's 64 chromosomes