To develop the agricultural by-product adsorbent that possesses anionic exchangeable function, the performance of a new anion exchanger prepared from wheat straw (WS) was evaluated in this study. Wheat straw anion exchanger (WS-AE) was prepared by the grafting of aminated intermediate onto WS. Results indicate that reaction time and temperature in the chemical modification process both affected the preparation of aminated intermediate and WS-AE. FTIR, nitrogen content, solid-state (13)C NMR and zeta potential data validated the existence of grafted amine group in the structure of WS-AE. The maximum sorption capacities of WS-AE for nitrate and phosphate were approximately 52.8 and 45.7 mg g(-1), respectively, which shows higher maximum capacity for phosphate and a similar capacity for nitrate in comparison with commercial anion resins. Regeneration studies and column adsorption tests were performed, and the excellent regeneration and column adsorption capacities provided strong evidence of the potential of WS-AE for the technological applications of phosphate and nitrate removal from aqueous solutions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.