## 3 Results and Discussion
### Effect of Breed and Finishing Diet on Fatty Acids Profile

Table 2: Effect of breed and finishing diet on fatty acids profile (expressed as g/100 g of fat) of _longissimus thoracis et lumborum_ muscle of foals. In particular, our data reported that breed significantly affected the fatty acids profile (\(p<0.05\)) of both groups. In line with literature, different works found \"breed effects\" on lipid profile of foils from different breeds finished with the same diet [18; 30]. Although both BU and JN foals showed that MUFAs were the most abundant fraction, followed by SFAs and PUFAs, significant differences were detected between the two groups. As regards SFA, JN foals showed a greater amount compared to BU ones (33.41 _vs._ 32.23 g/100 g of fat) (\(p<0.05\)). This could be explained especially by their higher contents of palmitic (C16:0) (though not significant) and stearic (C18:0) (\(p<0.001\)) acids. Total SFA contents recorded in both breeds are in accordance with values reported in the scientific literature for horse meat (34-49% of total FA) [2; 4; 46]. In detail, considering the majority fatty acid, C16:0, both groups presented similar amounts and corresponding to those found in 24-month female BU foals [20] and in 11-month male Italian Heavy Draught Horses (IHDH) [13]. Conversely, JN foals showed C18:0 values comparable to the contents obtained by [PERSON] et al. [9] and [PERSON] et al. [10] in Galician Mountain (GM) and Hispano-Breton (HB) horse breeds, respectively. On the contrary, the BU group reported C18:0 contents less than those previously reported by other authors [18; 20], who studied the same foal breed. This dissimilarity could be probably related to the different age, diet and duration of the finishing diets. On the other hand, statistical analysis indicated that the BU group recorded higher MUFA values compared to the JN group (37.35 and 35.58 g/100 g of fat), although without significant differences. Among MUFAs, in fact, oleic (C18:1n-9) acid represented the most abundant and showed similar values in both groups (\(p>0.05\)). In this case, our outcomes resulted to be higher than those described in recent works [7; 10; 44; 45]. Considering PUFAs, the JN group reported higher content than the BU one (\(p<0.001\)) (15.68 _vs._ 12.85 g/100 g of fat). Although our results were lower than those reported by other authors [9; 13; 18; 20; 30; 31; 43; 44], they could be considered within the range of values described by [PERSON] et al. [46] (16-46% of total FA). Among \(n\)-3 PUFAs, \(\alpha\)-linolenic acid (C18:3\(n\)-3) resulted to be most abundant in JN than in BU foals, though not significantly (\(p>0.05\)). Similar values were previously found in IHDH foals by some researchers [13; 31]. At the same time, our results for BU foals followed a different trend compared to those showed in studies about the same breed [18; 20]. Whereas, statistical differences were detected in long chain (LC) \(n\)-3 PUFAs, where the BU group showed lower contents compared to the JN group (\(p<0.05\)), probably due to its minor DPA value (\(p<0.01\)). Nevertheless, statistical analysis did not indicate differences in \(n\)-3 PUFA content between the two groups. On the other hand, \(n\)-6 PUFAs were significantly affected by breed (\(p<0.001\)), especially linoleic (C18:2\(n\)-6) and arachidonic (C20:4\(n\)-6) acids. In fact, these fatty acids showed significant higher concentrations in JN samples in comparison to BU ones (\(p<0.001\)). However, our results showed lower values than those reported in literature for C18:2\(n\)-6 [2; 7; 44] and for C20:4\(n\)-6 [7; 20; 30]. Concerning the nutritional indices, \(n\)-6/\(n\)-3 and PUFA/SFA ratios also resulted to be affected by breed (\(p<0.01\)). As described above, breed had a significant effect on \(n\)-6 PUFA contents, affecting, as a consequence, the \(n\)-6/\(n\)-3 ratio, which recorded the lowest values in BU foals compared to JN ones (2.24 _vs._ 2.62, respectively). Nevertheless, both BU and JN samples obtained \(n\)-6/\(n\)-3 values lower than 4, according to the recommendations [47].