African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 10 (4), pp. 527-534, 24 January, 2011 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJB DOI: 10.5897/AJB09.1395 ISSN 1684–5315 © 2011 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Determination of seed yield and yield components of some safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) Cultivars, Lines and Populations under the Semi-Arid Conditions Vedat Beyyavas 1 , Hasan Haliloglu 2 , Osman Copur 2 * and Ahmet Yilmaz 2 1 Department of Industrial Plants Growing, Suruç Training School, Harran University, 63800 Suruc-Sanliurfa, Turkey. 2 Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Harran University, 63190 Sanliurfa, Turkey. Accepted 27 December, 2010 This research was conducted to determine yield and yield components of 26 safflower cultivars, lines and populations in semi-arid conditions during the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 growing seasons. The experimental plots were arranged in a randomized complete block design with three replications. In this study, seed yield (kg ha -1 ), plant height (cm), number of branch per plant, number of head per plant, 1000 seed weight (g), oil content (%) and oil yield (kg ha -1 ) properties were investigated. According to the average of two years study, the highest seed yields were obtained from cultivars Syria Hama (1585 kg ha -1 ), Hartinan (1543 kg ha -1 ) and S-541-2 (1582 kg ha -1 ) lines, while the lines 250540 (34.8%) and S- 541-2 (34.2%) had the highest oil contents. The highest oil yields were obtained from Syria Hama (530 kg ha -1 ) cultivar and S-541-2 (541 kg ha -1 ) line. Keywords: Safflower, cultivar, seed yield, oil content. INTRODUCTION Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an important annual industrial crop. The stem, leaves, seeds and flowers are used for different purposes. In India and Pakistan, herbalists sell all parts of the crop for the treatment of various diseases, and the flowers of the crop are used in the food, cosmetics, paint and pharmaceutical industries (Dajue and Mundel, 1996). Safflower is an oil crop that can be grown in arid agricultural areas due to its high tolerance to heat and cold, and can also be grown in irrigated agricultural areas due to its tolerance to salinity and weeds (Karaca et al., 1989; Kaya et al., 2003; Dordas and Sioulas, 2008). Safflower seeds contain 13 to 46% oil, and approximately 90% of this oil is composed of unsaturated fatty acids, namely oleic and linoleic acids (Johnson et al., 1999). Safflower oil, which on average contains 75% *Corresponding author. E-mail: osmancopur@gmail.com. Tel: (90) 4143183690. Fax: (90) 4143183682. linoleic acid, also contains tocopherols, known to have antioxidant effect and high vitamin E content. For this reason, safflower oil is used in the diets of patients with cardiovascular disease, and bears great importance for its anti-cholesterol effect (Pongracz et al., 1995; Arslan et al., 2003). Ogut and Oguz (2006) reported that safflower oil is very suitable for biodiesel production. Cartharmin, which is a substance obtained from the flowers of saf- flower, is an important natural raw material of dye (Nagaraj et al., 2001). Safflower oil cake is a valuable animal feed (Weiss, 2000). For economic safflower farming, as well as cultural processes, the selection of appropriate varieties is also important. Many breeding methods are used for cultivar selection or development of cultivars. One of these is introduction and adaptation work. Based on this, the recognition of the plant charac- teristics of varieties and seed yield potential must be determined. Thus, the preliminary information will be available on the types and cultivars and recommended for field trials registration (Copur et al., 2009) The South-eastern Anatolia region has a great