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Plant growth, development and phenotypic plasticity are highly influenced by the genetic composition of a plant, environment, and genetic by environment interactions. The role of intraspecific genetic variance and environmental variations in mediating responses of commercially important crops such as sugarcane to wound stress is, however, poorly understood. Therefore, we utilized 10 sugarcane genotypes cultivated in different common gardens, and subsequently wounded to assess the influence of genotype by environment interaction on the expression profiles of sugarwin1 , a potent defense-responsive gene that is predominantly expressed in response to wounding. We found that, genotypes (G10, G6, G7) had higher transcript patterns of sugarwin1 in comparison with (G1,G3,G2, G4) and (G5, G9, G8) which had intermediate, and relatively low levels, respectively; these results imply that, genotype by environment interaction, at least partially, underlie the genetic responses of sugarcane to wound stress. In addition, the results suggest that some sugarcane genotypes may have evolved impressive mechanisms to adapt to rapidly changing environments. Our findings, however, do not exclude the input of other factors such as epigenetics, which modulate gene expression in response to environment. Overall, the findings have implications in plant evolutionary responses to changing environments, and also in breeding approaches for sugarcane crop genetic improvement. • Sugarwin1 is essential for wounding stress responses. • Genotype by environment interactions modulate sugarcane molecular responses. • Helpful for screening of sugarcane genotypes that are better adapted to wound stress across multiple environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]