BACKGROUNDSugarcane bagasse is a heterogeneous and organized material that needs a pretreatment to access the polysaccharides (cellulose and xylan). The particle size of a non‐milled bagasse can influence the xylan and xylose solubilization, as well as the enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated material. Using bagasse selected on 16‐, 30‐, 40‐ and 50‐mesh sieves: xylan solubilization was performed with hydrogen peroxide; xylose was solubilized with diluted sulfuric acid; and enzymatic hydrolysis was conducted for glucose yield evaluation.RESULTSThe xylose solubilized by acid pretreatment resulted in a maximum of 6.59 g L−1 with no influence of particle size. The solubilized xylan showed linear correlation with a variation of 36.18% (16‐mesh bagasse) to 71.43% (<50‐mesh bagasse). Pretreated material submitted to enzymatic hydrolysis revealed that particle size influenced the pretreatment, increasing the glucose yield.CONCLUSIONSThe results showed that non‐milled sugarcane bagasse particle size selection positively influenced the solubilization of xylan, improving the enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated material. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI)