Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy is a new developed method able to analyse the content of specific compound in the detected sample quickly and efficiently,and has been wildly used in many fields such as evaluation of nutrition value of forage,cultivar discrimination and so on.In the present paper a new method was developed for the discrimination of salt tolerance of alfalfa cultivars by Fourier transform near infrared reflectance spectroscopy.Firstly absorbance spectrum generated by Fourier transform near infrared spectrometry was used to classify twenty alfalfa cultivars.These cultivars were obviously clustered into two groups:salt tolerant and salt sensitive,similar to the result screened by the traditional methods.Based on these results,a discrimination model was built for identification of salt tolerant cultivars.And then,six other cultivars were used to verify the function of the discriminating model.Result showed that the distinguishing rate of 100% was achieved with the performance index of 85.7%.It is concluded that Fourier transform near infrared spectrum is useful for classification and discrimination of salt tolerance of alfalfa cultivars.The method can be applied to estimate salt tolerance of alfalfa cultivars,and works more quickly and efficiently than the traditional screening methods.Application of Fourier transform near infrared spectrum to discriminating salt tolerance of alfalfa cultivars is significant in both academic and technical areas.