Abstract
Long-term resource inputs can improve soil condition and crop productivity, yet how soil texture shapes the translation of these inputs into soil quality and yield remains insufficiently resolved. We investigated whether contrasting fluvo-aquic soil textures differ not only in the magnitude of their responses to long-term management, but also in the soil attributes and pathway structures associated with productivity. A 7-year field experiment compared five straw–mineral fertilizer–chicken manure regimes in sandy, loamy, and clayey fluvo-aquic soils, integrating soil quality assessment with random forest analysis and partial least squares path modeling. Long-term resource inputs increased both wheat yield and integrated soil quality across soil textures, but response magnitudes varied among textures, and the additional response to partial replacement of mineral N with chicken manure was also texture dependent. The soil attributes most strongly associated with yield likewise differed among textures: sandy soil showed associations spanning nutrient availability, carbon status, and pH; loamy soil showed stronger joint associations of nutrient supply with organic matter and microbial properties; and clayey soil was more closely associated with nutrient availability and pH-related conditions. Pathway analysis further indicated a shared but nonidentical linkage structure in which management regimes were associated with key soil properties, integrated soil quality, and wheat productivity, with pathway organization varying among textures. These findings indicate that soil texture is associated not only with differences in response magnitude, but also with the configuration of soil attributes and their linkage with integrated soil quality and crop productivity. The study thus advances long-term soil-management assessment from evaluating input effects alone toward a texture-aware framework centered on management inputs–key soil properties–soil quality–crop productivity, providing a basis for context-specific diagnosis of soil functional constraints.
