Moderate drought priming during non-critical growth period of crop can improve drought tolerance in later growth period.In order to study the effect of drought priming on improvment of the drought tolerance of sugarcane , drought-sensitive cultivars(‘ZZ2’‘FN’) and drought-tolerant cultivars(‘TD’‘ZZ9’) were used as experimental materials to conduct drought priming before water stress. Under different treatments,the physiological and biochemical responses of sugarcane under water stress were analyzed.The results showed that under water stress, the four sugarcane cultivars after drought priming had higher photosynthetic rate, high F_v/F_m, plant growth rate and leaf chlorophyll content, but slightly lower than the normal irrigation treatment compared with the sugarcane without drought priming.In addition, the content of proline and SOD activity in sugarcane leaves were higher and the content of MDA was lower, indicating that drought priming before water streas could improve the drought-resistance of sugarcane to some extent.In addition, different sugarcane cultivars had different effects of drought priming. Compared with sugarcane without drought priming, the drought resistance of sugarcane cultivars after drought priming was ‘ZZ2’>‘FN’>‘TD’>‘ZZ9’.this indicated that the drought priming effect on sugarcane cultivars sensitive to drought was better than that of drought tolerant sugarcane cultivars. Through the correlation analysis of various physiological indexes, it was found that MDA content in sugarcane leaves under drought priming could more accurately reflect the drought situation of sugarcane compared with other physiological indexes.It can be seen that sugarcane plants can improve their drought resistance by changing physiological response after drought priming.