Updated project metadata. Drought is considered the major abiotic stress limiting crop productivity. This study sought to identify proteins involved in the drought response in sugarcane stems submitted to drought stress. The integration of nuclei enrichment sample preparation with the shotgun proteomic approach (nLC-MS/MS) resulted in great coverage of the sugarcane stem proteome with 5,381 protein groups identified (1% FDR). A total of 1,204 differentially accumulated proteins (DAPs) were detected in response to drought, among which 586 showed increased abundance and 618 decreased abundance.