When the water is taken away or destroyed, sugar cane that uses it as it's water source don't update and break. Once there is a different block update to the sugar cane, for example it growing or having blocks place or destroyed next to it, the sugar cane breaks.

Some examples for taking away the water source are picking it up with a bucket, replacing it with another block, a sponge picking it up, etc.

This works on every computer I have tried it on that runs java edition.