PurposeThis study aims to improve the accuracy of hyperspectral estimation of soil organic matter content.Design/methodology/approachBased on the uncertainty in spectral estimation, 76 soil samples collected in Zhangqiu District, Jinan City, Shandong Province, were studied in this paper. First, the spectral transformation of the spectral data after denoising was carried out by means of 11 transformation methods such as reciprocal and square, and the estimation factor was selected according to the principle of maximum correlation. Secondly, the grey weighted distance was used to calculate the grey relational degree between the samples to be estimated and the known patterns, and the local linear regression estimation model of soil organic matter content was established by using the pattern samples closest to the samples to be identified. Thirdly, the models were optimized by gradually increasing the number of modeling samples and adjusting the decision coefficient, and a comprehensive index was constructed to determine the optimal predicted value. Finally, the determination coefficient and average relative error are used to evaluate the validity of the model.FindingsThe results show that the maximum correlation coefficient of the seven estimated factors selected is 0.82; the estimation results of 14 test samples are of high accuracy, among which the determination coefficient R2 = 0.924, and the average relative error is 6.608%.Practical implicationsStudies have shown that it is feasible and effective to estimate the content of soil organic matter by using grey correlation local linear regression model.Originality/valueThe paper succeeds in realizing both the soil organic matter hyperspectral grey relation estimating pattern based on the grey relational theory and the estimating pattern by using the local linear regression.