the experiment was conducted to evaluate the bromatological characteristics and the in vitro digestibility of four sugarcane varieties, subjected or not to hydrolysis, with quicklime. a completely randomized design was employed with three replications arranged in a 4 × 2 factorial scheme, with four sugarcane varieties (sp 52454, rb 867515, rb 855536 and iac 862480), hydrolyzed or not. there was significant effect on brix (p < 0.05) and industrial fiber (p < 0.05), and iac 862480 variety had the lowest levels of industrial fiber. there were no significant difference (p > 0.05) in neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber and lignin levels among the sugarcane varieties under analysis and for the sugarcanes, hydrolyzed or not. the use of sugarcane hydrolysis with 1% quicklime improves the in vitro digestibility of ndf and adf, regardless of the variety studied. hydrolysis with 1% quicklime did not alter the sugarcane chemical composition.
