The objective of this work was to identify sugarcane miRNAs that are differentially expressed under
drought stress and to correlate this expression with the behavior of two sugarcane cultivars with different drought
tolerances. The sugarcane cultivars RB867515 (higher drought tolerance) and RB855536 (lower drought tolerance) were
cultivated in a greenhouse for three months and then subjected to drought for 2, 4, 6 or 8 days. By deep sequencing of
small RNAs, we were able to identify 18 miRNA families. Among all of the miRNAs thus identified, seven were differentially
expressed during drought.