The invention discloses a preparation method and application of urea modified starch. The method comprises the following steps: (1) uniformly mixing and stirring urea, water and starch, filtering, andcarrying out freeze drying; (2) crushing the material obtained in the step (1), carrying out a heat preservation reaction for 1-50 h at a temperature of 50-150 DEG C, or carrying out microwave irradiation heating for 10 s to 60 min at a power of 50-1200 W, and cooling to room temperature; and (3) fully washing the material obtained in the step (2) with water, and carrying out vacuum drying to obtain the urea modified starch with the nitrogen content of 0.01-15 wt%. According to the method, the starch is modified by the urea under the solvent-free and catalyst-free conditions, the process is simple and convenient, green and environment-friendly, the energy consumption is low, complex steps of common starch modification are omitted, and the problems of long consumed time, harsh conditions,high cost, complex post-treatment and more byproducts of the existing method are also solved.