Abstract <p>Soil quality is a critical global issue closely tied to agricultural sustainability, and monitoring changes in soil quality over time is essential for assessing regional agricultural sustainability. In this study, we assessed the impact of various cropping systems, such as rice-wheat, rice-chickpea, rice-fallow, urd-mustard, maize-potato, and agroforestry, on soil quality in the Hazaribagh area of the eastern plateau and hill region of India. Thirty soil samples from each cropping system were analysed for 24 soil properties, and a soil quality index (SQI) was developed based on a minimum dataset. Among all the cropping systems, the rice-chickpea system exhibited significantly higher values for mean weight diameter (1.29&#xa0;mm), DTPA-Fe (95.6&#xa0;ppm), dehydrogenase activity (2.55&#xa0;μg TPF g⁻¹ h ⁻¹), and microbial metabolic quotient (0.22). Based on the soil management assessment framework, the most sensitive indicators of soil quality are available soil nutrients, enzyme activities, and microbial biomass carbon in the soil. The rice-chickpea system had the highest SQI (0.85), followed by agroforestry (0.81) = rice-fallow (0.81) &gt; urd-mustard (0.80) &gt; rice-wheat (0.76) &gt; maize-potato system (0.61) in the surface soil. Redundancy analysis (RDA) indicated that the two principal components explained 36% and 35% of the variation in the surface and subsurface soil properties, respectively. These findings offer valuable insights, demonstrating that pulse-based cropping systems are particularly effective in supplying nutrients and sustaining soil microbial activities. This could be a promising option for preventing soil quality degradation and ensuring long-term sustainability in the eastern plateau hill region of India.</p> Graphical abstract <p>Graphical abstract of research work.</p> <p></p>