MOC1 encodes for a plant-specific GRAS family protein, and this gene plays key role in the formation and development of axillary bud. Since the gene promoter is directly involved into transcriptional regulation, functional analysis can accurately locate the expression site, development stage and regulation mechanism of gene. Cloning the sequence and function analysis of ScMOC1 promoter will be of great significance in illustrating the regulation mechanism of ScMOC1. In this study, the 1874 bp promoter sequence upstream of ScMOC1 was isolated from the genomic DNA of sugarcane main cultivar ROC22 by using nested PCR and genomic walking methods. This isolated fragment was verified to be the promoter of ScMOC1 via sequence structure analysis. The results indicated that ScMOC1 promoter contained a few of core elements of the eukaryotic promoter such as TATA-box, CAAT-box, several light, hormone responsive elements and a cis-acting regulatory element related to meristem expression (CAT-box). We speculated that the ScMOC1 promoter could regulate the expression of ScMOC1 in a manner of hormone treatment, required for the sugarcane tillering regulation by the CAT-box cis-acting element. By constructing the target promoter into pBI121 plasmid that contains a GUS reporter, the results showed that this promoter could result in transient expression of GUS gene in sugarcane young leaves, and the deletion analysis indicated that the basic promoter sequence of the promoter was between 350 bp and 500 bp upstream of the starting codon ATG of ScMOC1. Thus, these results obtained above will provide the foundation information for ScMOC1 on transcriptional regulation.