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Not AvailableHost plant resistance is an effective means of managing aphid pests in safflower but its genetic basis is not known. In this study, F1 and F6- recombinant inbred lines (RILs) produced from the CO-1 × EC-523368-2 cross were phenotyped for tolerance to the aphid, Uroleucon compositae based on days-to-wilt (DW) after infestation. The F1 plants showed dominance effect and RILs exhibited quantitative variation. The RIL population was genotyped with 242 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, which included a set of 150 new SSRs designed through next generation sequencing and bioinformatics approaches. Two quantitative trait loci (QTLs), QUc-Ct3.1 and QUc-Ct5.1, putatively associated with DW after aphid infestation were detected. QUc-Ct3.1 was a major QTL located on linkage group (LG) 3 with the closest marker SafM-290 (LOD = 18.3), which explained 31.5% of the phenotypic variation. QUc-Ct5.1 was a minor QTL located on LG-5 with the closest marker CtDES-237 (LOD = 7.0), which explained 9.1% of the phenotypic variation. This is the first report and a significant lead towards discovering genes for tolerance to aphids in safflower.SERB, Government of India through National Post Doctoral Fellowship (PDF/2016/003679