I have a MSc degree in Microbiology (specialised in Virology), but for my PhD in Biotechnology I am focusing on systems genetics and how it can be used to gain an understanding of the genetic basis of complex traits such as wood properties in Eucalyptus, and thereby inform the design of genomic breeding programmes. Most Eucalyptus systems genetics studies have focused on single biparental crosses (mapping families), but this provides a limited view of architecture across families. The main limitations to multi-family studies are (i) cost of NGS technologies and (ii) lack of high-throughput methods for RNA isolation. My goal is to uncover the genetic architecture of wood property variation in a nested (multiparent) association mapping (NAM) population of Eucalyptus urophylla x E. grandis (UxG) hybrids, which consists of four distinct families, through quantitative trait loci (QTL) and expression QTL (eQTL) mapping. The availability of fully phased haplogenomes (i.e., maternal and paternal genome assemblies) for the mapping parents enables more accurate inference of eQTL haplotypes by linking gene expression variation to parent-specific genomic variants.