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BackgroundBanded leaf and sheath blight (BLSB), caused by the necrotrophic fungus Rhizoctonia solani, is a highly devastating disease in most maize and rice growing areas of the world. However, the molecular mechanisms of perceiving pathogen signals are poorly understood in hosts.ResultsHere, we identified a Rhizoctonia solani-inducible promoter pGRMZM2G174449 in maize. Deletion analysis showed that the −574 to −455 fragment was necessary for pGRMZM2G174449 in responding to R. solani and this fragment contained the unknown pathogen-inducible cis-elements according to the bioinformatics analysis. Furthermore, detailed quantitative assays showed that two cis-elements, GCTGA in the −567 to −563 region and TATAT in the −485 to −481 region, were specifically responsible for the R. solani-inducible activity. A series of point mutation analysis indicated that the two cis-elements have the conserved motifs of NHWGN and DWYWT, respectively.ConclusionOur results indicated that pGRMZM2G174449 is a good R. solani-inducible promoter suitable for genetic engineering of BLSB resistance. And NHWGN and DWYWT are two R. solani-inducible cis-elements that play important roles in pGRMZM2G174449 responding to R. solani.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-017-1181-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.