A sliding mode controller for the photovoltaic pumping system has been proposed in this paper. This system is composed of a photovoltaic generator supplying a three-phase permanent magnet synchronous motor coupled to a centrifugal pump through a three-phase voltage inverter. The objective of this study is to minimise the number of regulators and apply the sliding mode control by exploiting the specification of the field oriented control scheme (FOC). The first regulator is used to force the photovoltaic generator to operate at the maximum power point, while the second is used to provide the field oriented control to improve the system performance.The whole system is analysed and its mathematical model is done. Matlab is used to validate the performance and robustness of the proposed control strategy.