In this paper, 300 samples of desert soil collected in the Ebinur Lake Wetland Nature Reserve of Xinjiang were used as the research subject, and the visible/near-infrared spectra data about the soil obtained with the ASD Field Spec○R 3 HR spectrometer and the data about total phosphorus in the soil obtained through chemical analysis were used as the data sources; following Savizky-Golay smoothing, standard normal variation transformation and the first-order differential pretreatment, the combination of ant colony optimization interval partial least squares (ACO-iPLS) and genetic algorithm interval partial least squares (GA-iPLS) were employed to extract the characteristic wavelengths of the total phosphorus content in desert soil, before the partial least squares regression model for predicting the total-phosphorus content in soil was constructed; and this model was compared with the full-spectrum partial least squares model, ACO-iPLS and GA-iPLS. According to the results: through filtering with ACO-iPLS, the total-phosphorus characteristic wavebands in the desert soil were 500~700, 1 101~1 300, 1 501~1 700, and 1 901~2 100 nm; through further variable selection with GA-iPLS, 13 effective wavelengths with the minimum colinearity were selected, which were respectively: 1 621, 546, 1 259, 573, 1 572, 1 527, 564, 1 186, 1 988, 1 541, 2 024, 1 118, and 1 191 nm. According to the comparison of modeling methods, the most accurate model was the one based on the characteristic variables selected with the combination of ACO-iPLS and GA-iPLS, followed by the ones with genetic algorithm, ant colony optimization algorithm and the full spectrum method. For the total phosphorus content in soil model established with the combination of ACO-iPLS and GA-iPLS, the root mean square error of cross validation (RMSECV) and the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) were respectively 0.122 and 0.108 mg·g-1, and the related coefficient for cross validation (Rc) and the related coefficient for prediction (Rp) were 0.535 7 and 0.555 9, respectively. Therefore, it can be seen that the model constructed through Savizky-Golay smoothing, standard normal variation transformation and the first-order differential pretreatment and by using the combination of ACO-iPLS and GA-iPLS has simple structure, high prediction accuracy and good robustness, and can be used for estimating the total phosphorus content in desert soil.