The invention discloses an image evaluation index establishing method for nondestructive diagnosis of crop nitrogen nutrition. The method comprises the steps that wheat canopy images and the nitrogen content of leaves are obtained; the wheat canopy images are subjected to partition extraction, average pixel values of R, G, B, H, S and I components of all non-zero pixel points of leaves in each wheat canopy image are calculated to serve as basic color characteristic parameters r, g, b, h, s and i; nine image characteristic parameters r, g, b, r-g-b, r-g, r-b, (r-g-b)/(r+g+b), (r-g)/(r+g+b), and (r-b)/(r+g+b) are calculated; CMI=(xr-yg-zb) is established, fitting with the nitrogen content of the leaves is carried out, weight coefficients x, y and z are determined, CMI is subjected to standardized processing, and it is determined that NCMI=(xr-yg-zb)/(r+g+b). The NCMI established in the method is a relatively-proper winter wheat nitrogen nutrition evaluation index, accuracy and stability are achieved, and the crop nitrogen content can be quantitatively evaluated.