Soil quality play a key role in ecosystem functions for sustained crop productivity and promotion of plant health. In recent years, pronounced decline in soil health has been observed globally, resulting from non-adoption of appropriate agricultural practices and land-use approaches. Long-term sustainability of perennial crops like arecanut is threatened by soil degradation resulting from intensive land use practices in small and marginal holdings. Effective utilization of natural resources is encouraged by temporal and spatial arrangement of crops of different height, canopy patterns and root architecture in arecanut based cropping system (ABCS) become effective in improving productivity and also bringing gradual improvement in the soil properties by continuous addition of biomass into soil. Cropping system approach also helps to meet the diversified need of the farmers, increased profitability per unit area and mitigating the risk of mono-cropping. In this context, crop diversification in arecanut plantation with compatible subsidiary crops under six models were evaluated and results indicated significant improved of soil organic carbon (0.60% to 0.86 %), soil reaction (5.43-5.68) status over mono-cropping in the top layer of soil, along with a positive impact on the availability of essential macronutrients. ABCS involving crop combination of arecanut with black pepper, bay leaf, pineapple and colocasia contributed to higher chali equivalent yield (3,761 kg ha-1) from the subsidiary crops. ABCS not only providing additional income from different component crops, but also increased the chali yield even up to 50 % more than arecanut mono-cropping with highest net return per rupee of investment (4.21).