**Table 1.**

*Important genes involved in the drought stress tolerance.*

networks, comprising TFs, protein kinases and phosphatases [103–107]. As some of the plant responses under drought are ABA-dependent, both water stress and exogenous ABA treatment lead to several differentially expressed genes [108–110]. Free proline accumulation was correlated to drought stress tolerance in different sugarcane cultivars [111]. Transgenic sugarcane plants expressing a heterologous P5CS (encoding a proline biosynthetic enzyme), showed a positive correlation between enhanced proline content, increased biomass yield and photochemical efficiency of photosystem II under drought stress [112]. Iskandar et al. [113] indicated that a strong correlation between the expression of DIGs with increasing drought stress. Under severe drought stress, the expression of dehydrin proteins was induced [102], although there is no significant relation to sucrose accumulation [101, 113].
