![\"An](\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2025\/09\/19\/3528592.JPG\")
An employee of Kheiron Biotech sorting oocytes from horses at their laboratory in Pilar, Buenos Aires, Argentina. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\nTHEY look like ordinary foals, docile with honey brown coats and white facial patches, content to spend their days munching alfalfa in a cordoned-off pasture in rural Buenos Aires province.<\/p>\n
But these five 10-month-olds are the world\u2019s first genetically edited horses: cloned copies of a prize-winning horse named Polo Pureza, or Polo Purity, with a single DNA sequence inserted using CRISPR technology with the aim of producing explosive speed.<\/p>\n
Kheiron Biotech, the Argentine company that created the horses, says gene-editing has the potential to revolutionise horse breeding.<\/p>\n
While cloning creates a genetically identical copy, CRISPR functions as a sort of genetic scissors to cut and customise DNA. The company, which specialises in equine cloning, used CRISPR to reduce the expression of the myostatin gene, which limits muscle growth. The idea was to increase the muscle fibers that allow for powerful movements and so transform the horses into sprinters.<\/p>\n
But polo isn\u2019t letting them in so fast.<\/p>\n
While Argentina, regarded as the global capital of polo, has long welcomed reproductive technologies \u2013 including cloning \u2013 to breed elite horses, the sport\u2019s national body and breeding association are putting up hurdles to prevent GE horses from joining the game.<\/p>\n
An employee of Kheiron Biotech sorting oocytes from horses at their laboratory in Pilar, Buenos Aires, Argentina. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
The Argentine Polo Association has banned GE horses from competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t like them to play polo,\u201d said Benjamin Araya, the association\u2019s president. \u201cThis takes away the charm, this takes away the magic of breeding. I like to choose a mare, choose a stallion, cross them, and hope that it will turn out very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the Argentine Association of Polo Horse Breeders said it will monitor the horses for four or five years before making a decision on whether to register them as Argentine polo ponies.<\/p>\n
Kheiron said it was confident the polo community would eventually come around.<\/p>\n
“The truth is that I\u2019m not so worried about it,\u201d Gabriel Vichera, the company\u2019s scientific director, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEducating, I think that\u2019s what we have to keep doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear how the sport\u2019s national body would enforce a ban. Argentine regulations do not distinguish between cloned, GE and conventionally bred horses and neither does the polo association.<\/p>\n
Some breeders said while they appreciate how clones can help preserve the bloodlines, gene-editing goes too far and could threaten their business.<\/p>\n
![\"Oocytes](\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2025\/09\/19\/3528590.JPG\")
Oocytes from horses appear under a microscope at Kheiron Biotech\u2019s laboratory. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ruins breeders,\u201d said Marcos Heguy, a breeder and former professional polo player.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like painting a picture with artificial intelligence. The artist is finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eduardo Ramos, who began breeding in the 70s, said that breeders had also been sceptical at first of other advances in biotech, such as embryo transplants and cloning.<\/p>\n
\u201cScience and technology will keep advancing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who say this shouldn\u2019t be done won\u2019t be able to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Polo, which originated in Central Asia, was brought to Argentina by British immigrants, who founded the first polo club in Buenos Aires in 1882. It\u2019s somewhat like hockey on horseback, where two teams of four people each sweep long mallets to drive a ball through goal posts.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s expensive \u2013 players ride as many as a dozen horses per game \u2013 and in Argentina, wealthy land-owning families have traditionally dominated the sport.<\/p>\n
The country exported about 2,400 polo horses last year, according to government data, and the Argentine polo breed dominates prestigious competitions like the Queen\u2019s Cup in England and the Argentine Open. The sport has long used surrogates to carry embryos of polo-playing horses. And unlike horse racing, polo allows cloned animals.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2025\/09\/19\/3528594.JPG\")
A cloned newborn horse next to its surrogate mother. a cloned foal generally sells for an average of US$40,000. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s first cloned horse was born in 2003. Adolfo Cambiaso, widely considered the world\u2019s top player, helped popularise polo clones. When a clone of Cambiaso\u2019s prized Cuartetera sold at an auction in 2010 for US$800,000, the amount caught the attention of Vichera, then a biotech doctoral student.<\/p>\n
Vichera went on to co-found Kheiron the next year with backing from businessman Daniel Sammartino. Its first cloned horse was born in 2013.<\/p>\n
Cloned horses weren\u2019t an easy sell at first. To get going, Sammartino said he provided free cloning services to top breeders, who allowed him to keep some of the newborn clones in exchange. By this year, the company says it will produce 400 clones, more than half of all the cloned horses born in Argentina in 2025, according to the breeders\u2019 association\u2019s estimates.<\/p>\n
The cloned foals sell for an average of US$40,000, Sammartino said. In 2017, the Kheiron lab used CRISPR genetic editing to produce nine GE horse embryos for research purposes.<\/p>\n
That upset some prominent figures in Argentina\u2019s polo world who visited the government\u2019s biotech regulator, concerned about the possibility of gene-edited horses entering the sport, said Martin Lema, who headed the agency at the time.<\/p>\n
For the next few years, Kheiron said the lab focused on other animals, producing gene-edited cows and pig embryos designed for human transplants. Then late last year in the gaucho town of San Antonio de Areco \u2013 where farm hands still wear berets in traditional cowboy culture \u2013 Kheiron\u2019s birthing clinic produced the five GE foals.<\/p>\n
Argentina\u2019s biotech regulator verified the DNA edit, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters.<\/p>\n
The department of agriculture, which oversees the agency, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2025\/09\/19\/3528591.JPG\")
A man playing during a polo training session, in Canuelas, Buenos Aires, Argentina. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
About 50 breeders signed on to a letter to the breeders\u2019 association that said the gene-edited horses were \u201ccrossing a limit\u201d and asked not to register the horses without \u201ca profound reflection on where we want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Santiago Ballester, the president of the association, said he personally has \u201cno problem\u201d with genetically edited horses, he acknowledged the concerns of fellow breeders about how gene-editing would affect their business, and whether countries that import Argentine polo horses would accept gene-edited ones.<\/p>\n
The association decided to tread cautiously.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be careful, responsible,\u201d Ballester said. \u201cWe have to see what impact these horses will have, if they are really superior animals. If they are normal, who is going to pay money for this?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ted Kalbfleisch, a geneticist at the University of Kentucky\u2019s Gluck Equine Research Centre, said that Kheiron\u2019s insertion of a natural DNA sequence simply sped up traditional modifications, which can take several generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere things get sketchy is when you\u2019re trying to maybe make edits you\u2019re guessing about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But with myostatin, scientists edited \u201ca gene that we know is present in healthy horses. When they take that and edit it into a clone, provided they do it faithfully… it ought to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Kalbfleisch said that gene-edited horses may have an advantage in polo tournaments, it\u2019s not necessarily an unfair one.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis technology, the cloning and the gene editing, are pretty well democratised right now,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you can write a check you can get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The horses still have a ways to go before they hit the polo field. At age two, they\u2019ll start easing into a saddle. A year or two later, they\u2019ll begin learning polo.<\/p>\n
But Sammartino admitted that plans to commercialise their gene-editing service are on hold until the polo authorities are on board. The pause has frustrated Sammartino, who said he had been contacted by a dozen potentially interested clients in Argentina, though he declined to put Reuters in contact with them, citing privacy reasons.<\/p>\n
Even so, Sammartino acknowledged that an element of uncertainty remains.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill it be a better horse? I don\u2019t know. Time will tell.\u201d \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
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