Insolubility of cellulose in common solvent had been a challenge in generating cellulose hydrogels. In the present work, hydrogels from sugarcane bagasse extracted cellulose and modify with synthetic polymer, poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and cross-linker, glutaraldehyde (GA) was synthesize. Cellulose was isolated from sugarcane bagasse via pre-treatment with 4 vol\% sulphuric acid (H2SO4) and 10 wt\% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution. The cellulose extracted was dissolved in ZnCl2/CaCl2 solution at 65 celcius to fabricate self-standing cellulose hydrogel without cross-linker. Another cellulose hydrogel was generated and immersed into 5 wt\% GA solution to cross-link the cellulose chains. To improve the stability and swelling properties of cellulose, PVA was introduced into the hydrogel by using GA to cross-link cellulose chains with PVA chains. The resulting hydrogels were characterized with Attenuated Total Reflectance-Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy and solid state 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy for structural determination. Three self-standing cellulose-based hydrogels, including regenerated cellulose (RC), GA cross-linked cellulose (C-GA), followed by PVA and GA cross-linked cellulose (CGA-PVA) were successfully generated from ZnCl2/CaCl2 dissolution system and each hydrogel possessed different physical aspects. The occurrence of chemical cross-linking reaction between cellulose, GA and PVA was further evidenced by the data analyzed from ATR-FTIR and NMR spectra. The swelling degree of hydrogels generally increase after the addition of PVA and GA into cellulose suspension, showing 52 \% (RC), 80 \% (C-GA) and 135 \% (C-GA-PVA). C-GA-PVA possessed the best swelling capability and potential for possible application as water reservoir in agriculture. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 4th International Conference on Soft Materials. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).