To realize the early detection of P. striiformis f. sp. tritici latent infections in wheat leaves while no disease symptoms appear, a qualitative model for identification of the wheat leaves in the incubation period of stripe rust was built using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) technology combined with qualitative partial least squares (DPLS). In this study, 30 leaf samples infected with P. striiformis f. sp. tritici were collected each day during the eleven-day incubation period. And 30 healthy leaf samples and 30 leaf samples showing disease symptoms infected with P. striiformis f. sp. tritici, were also collected as controls. In total, there were 390 leaf samples that were divided into thirteen categories. Near infrared spectra of 390 leaf samples were obtained using MPA spectrometer and then a model to identify the categories of wheat leaves was built using cross verification method. The effects of different spectral ranges, samples for building the model, preprocessing methods of spectra and number of principal components on NIRS prediction results for qualitative identification were investigated. The optimal identification results were obtained for the model built in the combined spectral region of 5 400～6 600 and 7 600～8 900 cm-1 when the spectra were divided into the training set and the testing set with the ratio equal to 4∶1, “scatter correction” was used as the preprocessing method and the number of principal components was 14. Accuracy rate, misjudgment rate and confusion rate of the training set were 95.51%, 1.28% and 3.21%, respectively. And accuracy rate, misjudgment rate and confusion rate of the testing set were 100.00%, 0.00% and 0.00%, respectively. The result showed that using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy technology, P. striiformis f. sp. tritici latent infections in wheat leaves could be detected as early as one day after inoculation (or 11 days before symptoms appearing) and the number of days when the leaf has been infected could also be identified. The results indicated that the method using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy technology proposed in this study is feasible for the identification of wheat leaves latently infected by P. striiformis f. sp. tritici. A new method based on NIRS was provided for the early detection of wheat stripe rust in this study.