Abstract: The study investigated whether the sugarcane disease found in cane-growing regions in Ximeng, Yunnan Province in 2018 was sugarcane white leaf caused by phytoplasma. We performed nested PCR with phytoplasma universal primer pairs (P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2) to identify 16S rRNA genes for detection of SCWL phytoplasma in 10 suspected SCWL samples collected from Ximeng. Amplified products were cloned, sequenced and analyzed. The results of nested PCR showed that about 1240 bp nested PCR amplified fragment could be obtained from all 10 samples. The sequencing results showed that the 10 16S rRNA gene sequences were all 1247 bp in length and the nucleotide identity between the sequences was 100%. BLASTN analysis revealed that all nucleotide sequences amplified from the diseased plants shared 100% sequence similarity with the nucleotide sequence of 16S rRNA genes from SCWL phytoplasma isolates LC7 and LC9 from Lincang, Yunnan Province (Genbank accession no. KR020691 and KR020692). The virtual RFLP analysis indicated that the virtual RFLP patterns of the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the Ximeng isolates were identical with those of subgroup 16SrXI-B. Thus, we confirm that sugarcane disease in Ximeng, Yunnan Province is SCWL caused by subgroup 16SrXI-B phytoplasma.