Abstract The abundance and distribution of 44 Ti tells us about the nature of the core-collapse supernovae explosions. There is a need to understand the nuclear reaction network creating and destroying 44 Ti in order to use it as a probe for the explosive mechanism. The 44 Ti( α, p ) 47 V reaction is a very important reaction and it controls the destruction of 44 Ti. Difficulties with direct measurements have led to an attempt to study this reaction indirectly. Here, the first step of the indirect study which is the identification of levels of the compound nucleus 48 Cr is presented. A 100-MeV proton beam was incident on a 50 Cr target. States in 48 Cr were populated in the 50 Cr( p, t ) 48 Cr reaction. The tritons were momentum-analysed in the K600 Q2D magnetic spectrometer at iThemba LABS.