The yellow leaf disease of sugarcane is distributed worldwide and causes important yield losses. This disease is caused by a member of the Luteoviridae family, the Sugarcane yellow leaf virus (SCYLV). The objective of this study was to characterize genetic factors for resistance to yellow leaf disease in a sugarcane clone resistant to infection by SCYLV. We analysed a progeny of 196 clones obtained from a cross between the susceptible cultivar _R570_ and the resistant cultivar _MQ76-53_. This progeny was assessed for virus incidence using tissueblot immunoassay after 10 years of cultivation under natural infection conditions. The progeny was genotyped with various types of molecular markers resulting in 2822 polymorphic markers. Marker/ trait association analysis revealed that SCYLV resistance in _MQ76-53_ is controlled by Ryl1, a major quantitative trait allele (QTA) accounting for 32% of the phenotypic variance. Ryl1 is the first major QTA described to control a viral disease in sugarcane, and _MQ76-53_ can already be used to introgress SCYLV resistance derived from Ryl1 in elite germplasm.