Nitrogen(N)，which mostly derived from soil are essential nutrients for sugarcane productivity.Excessive application of nitrogen fertilizer has become one of the major limiting factors affecting the development of sugarcane industry，and might cause environmental pollution and soil acidification.Sustainable production is now a focus of sugarcane agronomy and breeding.Developing improved nitrogen use efficiency(NUE)is targeted as one way to maximize yields in low input agronomic systems.Additionally，improved NUE may minimize the detrimental effects of N as a pollutant in water and air under high input agronomic systems.How to control or reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizer with increasing sugarcane production to reduce the cost and environmental pollution has become an important scientific problems facing sugarcane industry.In this article，the development of nitrogen physiology in sugarcane，including microbial assessment for sugarcane nitrogen acquisition，the relationship between nitrogen acquisition and sugarcane productivity，the function of enzymes in the process of nitrogen acquisition，assimilation and transportation were summarized and could be used to provide references for improving nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency in commercial sugarcane system.