Diachronic assessment of soil organic C and N dynamics under long-term no-till cropping systems in the tropical upland of Cambodia

No-till (NT) cropping systems have been proposed as a strategy to combat soil degradation by storing soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN). We quantified the impacts of NT cropping systems on the changes in SOC and TN stocks and in particulate and mineral-associated organic matter fractions (POM and MAOM), to 100 cm depth, from three 13-year-old experiments in a tropical red Oxisol in Cambodia using diachronic and equivalent soil mass approaches. Established in 2009 and arranged in a randomized complete-block design with triplicates, the experiments included maize (MaiEx)-, soybean (SoyEx)-, and cassava (CasEx)-based cropping systems. Each experiment comprised three treatments: (1) mono-cropping of main crops (maize, soybean, and cassava) under conventional tillage (CTM); (2) mono-cropping of main crops under NT systems with the use of cover crops (NTM); and (3) bi-annual rotation of main crops under NT systems with the use of cover crops (NTR), with both crops being presented every year and represented by NTR1 and NTR2. Soil samples were collected in 2021, 10 years after the last sampling. All the NT systems significantly (p