Climatic risk for sugarcane and complementary irrigation strategies for then minimization in different Brazilian regionsSugarcane is a crop of major social, economic and environmental importance for Brazil. The increasing demand by ethanol for the national flex fuel cars and the attractive sugar prices in the international market is making this crop to expand in a disorderly manner in the country. As well as the other crops, sugarcane requires specific climatic conditions to develop and produce, which are the main source of risk for this crop. Based on that, the objective of this study was to determine the climatic risk for sugarcane crop in different Brazilian regions, mainly for the areas to where the crop is expanding recently, and to evaluate the benefits of different complementary irrigation strategies for yield increase. For that, the model CSM-CANEGRO, parameterized for Brazilian conditions, was used to simulate the 12-month plant cane crop yield for 30 locations in different regions of Brazil, with varied climates, using a historical climate series from 1981 to 2010 and three types of soils, with distinct soil water holding capacities. With the simulated potential (PP) and attainable (PA) yield data two scenarios of climatic risk were defined, according to the climatic efficiency (η), one optimistic (η ≥ 0.65), and other conservative (η ≥ 0.45). Besides, five different complementary irrigation scenarios were simulated, with a fixed irrigation depth of 30 mm, and with the number of irrigations ranging from zero (rainfed crop) to five (150 mm per cycle), during the dry season of each location. The results showed that even with restricted climate series was possible to characterize the climatic conditions of the traditional and expanding sugarcane areas. The CSM-CANEGRO presented a satisfactory performance to estimate the operational sugarcane yield in different environments, with a Root Mean Square Error of about 15 t ha -1 . The crop model was also able to simulate the potential and attainable yield for different soil types and planting dates, which makes possible to characterize the climatic risks associated to the sugarcane crop in the different Brazilian regions. The region with the highest risk was Petrolina, PE, whereas the smallest risk was observed where the rainfall was more intense, as in Recife, PE, and Araguaína, TO. Based on the simulations with the different complementary irrigation strategies, it was possible to understand that the 12-month plant cane response to water depends on the combination among amount of water, soil type and planting date. The highest yield increments were observed in the sandy soils, since this is the condition where the water deficit is more intense. However, for the majority of the locations evaluated, the average yield increment for the irrigation depth applied, between 30 and 150 mm, were not greater than 30%, with the only exception for Petrolina, PE. 10 14 profundas, que chegam a 6 m de profundidade, as quais têm o papel de abastecer a planta com água das camada...