A near-infrared spectroscopic(NIRS) method using competitive adaptive reweighted sampling(CARS) for variable screening was established for the rapid determination of luteolin,with imidazole ionic liquid as adsorbent enriching luteolin in dilute solution.Effects of amount of adsorbent,pH value and oscillation time on the adsorption efficiency were investigated,and the adsorption capacity of the adsorbent was explored.The adsorbent enriching luteolin was detected by near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy,and a quantitative correction model for luteolin was constructed by CARS method for variable screening combined with partial least squares regression(PLS).Results showed that,under the optimal conditions of 0.15 g of adsorbent,pH 7,and 20 min of oscillation time,the adsorption rate reached to 90.9%,and the adsorption conformed to the Langmuir isotherm adsorption model,with a maximum adsorption capacity of 7.1 mg/g.In the NIRS modeling,the developed model was compared with that of the non CARS variable screening process,and the comparison showed that the results of the CARS variable screening method were better,which were also confirmed by the continuous wavelet transform(CWT) spectral preprocessing.The results exhibited that,the RPD value increased after CWT treatment,which further explain the reliability of the model.This method could be used for effective enrichment of luteolin in dilute solution,and the NIRS method combined with CWT spectrum pretreatment using CARS variable screening could realize the sensitive and rapid detection of luteolin in dilute solution.