Over the years A-1 has been  the most widely grown high yielding safflower variety owing to highly co adapted gene complexes which is supposed to be due to a chain of tightly linked genes. Efforts made to improve its oil content and disease resistance of this genotype have been unsuccessful so for. Therefore A1 along with A2 (high oil yield) were recurrently backcrossed with non spiny genotypes (NARI-6 and PBNS- 40) to induce nonspiny nature in these genotypes. Simultaneously an attempt has been made to break the tight linkage through intermating in F2 and segregating lines having high oil content, disease resistance and non spiny nature. BC1 F2 of back cross and intermated populations were evaluated to assess their genetic parameters. A wide range of variation was observed for the eight traits including seed yield. As predicted, the intermated population had better mean than the back cross especially in seed yield /plant, 100 seed weight (g) and volume weight (g/l). The range of expression was increased for productivity and its component traits in all the populations of back cross and intermating. Higher magnitude of PCV and GCV coupled with broad sense heritability and genetic advance as percentage over mean for characters studied such as number of capitula /plant, number of seeds /capitulum, 100 seed weight and volume weight since, were directly related to seed yield in safflower. Most of the characters had low value of GCV as compared to the PCV indicating the scope for further genetic improvement. Owing to presence of wide variability, there is scope for yield improvement.