Bamboo, like other lignocellulosic materials, is mainly composed of three polymeric components: cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Cellulose is the main component of lignocelluloses, and the major source of fermentable sugars. However, hemicelluloses and lignin in lignocelluloses are closely associated with cellulose and form complex structure, which block the accessibility of enzymes to cellulose (Liese, 1987). Thus, a pretreatment step is crucial to removing part of lignin and hemicelluloses, breaking the complex structure of lignocelluloses, and improving the accessibility of enzymes to cellulose fibers. The common pretreatment methods mainly included physical methods (Bonn et al., 1983); chemical methods such as acid pretreatment (Esteghlalian et al., 1997) and alkaline pretreatment (Millet et al., 1976); physical–chemical methods such as steam explosion (Mackie et al., 1985); and biological methods (Akin et al., 1995). Among these, alkaline pretreatment has been found to be a promising pretreatment method because of its low cost, and importantly, highly effective in delignification, cellulose swelling, which can significantly improve the hydrolysis rate and yield of lignocelluloses. So far, many researches on the hydrolysis of bamboo after alkaline pretreatment have been reported. Li et al. (2012) explored the effect of microwave coupled with KOH pretreatment (12%, 180 C, 30 min) on enzymatic hydrolysis of moso bamboo, and the glucose and xylose yields of pretreated bamboo reached 20.87% and 63.06%, respectively, compared with non-pretreated bamboo (2.4% of glucose yield and 2.9% of xylose yield). Subsequently, they studied the feasibility of ethanosolv with NaOH pretreatment to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of moso bamboo, and the cellulose-to-glucose conversion yield increased from 2.4% (before pretreatment) to 45.1% after NaOH pretreatment at 180 C for 30 min (Li et al., 2013). As an easily recycled alkaline pretreatment method, soaking in aqueous ammonia pretreatment process has been proved effective in the lignin removal of wheat straw and corn stover (Rémond et al., 2010; Sun et al., 2014), but researches about the effect of soaking in aqueous ammonia pretreatment on the hydrolysis of bamboo have not been reported yet.