Assessing soil health responses to organic amendments in red-soil cropping systems

Soil health is widely recognized as a key determinant of sustainable crop production. However, the effects of organic material amendments on soil health and the relative performance of different assessment approaches remain insufficiently explored in red-soil agroecosystems. We quantified the effects of organic material amendments on soil health and crop productivity in maize and peanut cropping systems and compared four soil health assessment approaches: linear scoring (L), sigmoidal scoring (Sig), comprehensive assessment of soil health (CASH), and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Our results indicate that organic material amendments significantly improved soil health, with the greatest improvements observed under the NSM treatment. Among the four approaches evaluated, EFA-SHI showed relatively high sensitivity and a positive relationship with crop yield. Positive relationships between all SHIs and crop yield suggest that improvements in soil health were accompanied by enhanced crop performance. Overall, our findings suggest that the NSM treatment was associated with greater improvements in soil health and crop performance and that EFA-based assessment may provide a useful data-driven approach for soil health evaluation in red-soil agroecosystems. These findings may offer a reference for sustainable soil management in southern China.