Background The common cutworm, Spodoptera litura Fabricius is a leaf and fruit feeding generalist insect of the order Lepidoptera and a destructive agriculture pest. The broad host range of the herbivore is due to its ability to downregulate plant defense across different plants. The identity of Spodoptera litura released effectors that downregulate plant defense are largely unknown. The current study aims to identify genes encoding effector proteins from salivary glands of S. litura (Fab.). Results Head and salivary glands of Spodoptera litura were used for de-novo transcriptome analysis and effector prediction. Eight hundred ninety-nine proteins from the head and 330 from salivary gland were identified as secretory proteins. Eight hundred eight proteins from the head and 267 from salivary gland proteins were predicted to be potential effector proteins. Conclusions This study is the first report on identification of potential effectors from Spodoptera litura salivary glands.

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An experiment was conducted during 2016-17 and 2017-18 at WTC, ICAR-IARI New Delhi on wheat crop sown on three dates (15th November, 30th November and 15th December) with five irrigation treatments. The results indicated that the number of days required for attaining different phenological stages decreased with delay in sowing.For all the phenological stages, crop sown on 15th November consumed higher heat units and consequently resulted in higher yield and heat use efficiency (HUE) than that of other sowing. However, higher pheno-thermal index (PTI) values were observed for the late sown crop i.e. 15th December. Further, among the irrigation treatments, five irrigations throughout the growing period showed increase in days to physiological maturity as well as heat units and HUE for grain and biological yield as compared to other treatments. Five irrigations throughout the growing period increased the grain yield by 69 per cent and biological yield by 46 per cent that that of one irrigation at CRI stage. However, there was no significant difference observed between four and five irrigations levels. The heat units or GDD had highly significant correlation with biological yield(r=0.91) as well as with the grain yield (r=0.85).