molecular markers are extensively used in human, plants and animals for basic and applied studies such as fingerprinting, allelic intergression, selection of useful traits and construction of genetic maps. In biological science a genetic linkage map is a schematic representation of genetic loci and shows the position of known genes or genetic markers relative to each other in terms of Centi Morgan which is the result of recombination frequency rather than real physical distance along each chromosome. This information is usually inferred from experimental populations that are developed for such purposes. With multiple applications, linkage mapping is critical for identifying the location of genes that cause genetic diseases in a variety of species. In plant breeding genetic maps with high genome coverage are becoming increasingly useful in both basic and applied researches. One of the most important key items for future plant breeding is genetic maps. A genetic linkage map shows the location of gene loci including the morphological, isozyme, protein and DNA markers along the chromosomes of living species. The distance between loci shows the recombination percentage among the genic loci which is the major principle for genetic map construction. Genetic linkage maps serve variety of purposes in both basic and applied genetic researches including localization of quantitative trait loci (QTL), markers assisted selection and cloning interest genes. In spite of considerable advancement in genetic map construction in several economically important plants such as rice, maize, sorghum and wheat, there are limited studies in safflower. Safflower is a diploid (n=12), thistle –like member of the family Compositea that thrives in hot, dry climates. It is one of humanity oldest crops and has been traditionally grown for the production of fabric dyes and food coloring, as well as for medicinal purposes. Today safflower is cultivated mainly for it is seed, which is used for birdseed, animal feed meal, industrial application and most importantly edible oil production. To construct genetic linkage groups of safflower an F 2 population from a cross between cultivated Carthamus tinctorius L. and wild C. Oxyacanthus , safflower species were used. Both morphological and EST-SSR markers were included. From a total of 66 tested EST-SSR markers, 14 (21/21 %) showed polymorphism between the parents and were used on the 148 F 2 progenies. Five percent of the total markers used were mapped in to two linkage groups. The first linkage group contained two EST-SSR markers and the second group consisted of one EST-SSR and one morphological markers. Both linkage groups span 62.2 cM of the genome. The reason for such a low number of linkage groups and limited numb
