Evaluation of the trend of the inbreeding from 1970 to 2011 in the Bracco Italiano dog breed

The Bracco Italiano is one of the oldest pointing dog breed, used for hunting ever since the Renaissance time. In this study we analysed the pedigree information to evaluate the trend of the inbreeding of the breed in the course of time since 1970 to 2011. Pedigree records of 24,613 animals were considered. 16,832 dogs were inbreds. The average inbreeding coefficient in the reference population (23,997 animals) resulted 4.1%, while the average inbreeding of the inbreds was 6%. The inbreeding coefficient was <0.05 in 9849 dogs (58.51%) whereas it was >0.20 in 623 dogs (2.53%). The percentage of inbreds per year increased from 2.44% in 1976-1980 to 100% in 2003. 16 traced generations were highlighted. The evolution of inbreeding indicates a steady increase over time, from a mean value of 0.5% for dogs born in 1979, to an average value of 7.6% in dogs born in 2011. Nevertheless a regular monitoring of genetic variability of the population is important and must be adopted, in order to avoid the danger of an excessive increase of inbreeding in the future, which would result in significant inbreeding depression and in significant loss of genetic variation.