In tropical agroecosystems, productivity declines associated with soil organic matter (SOM) degradation can be reversed through the application of organic inputs of diverse quality which also increase crop fertilizer use efficiency. To soils that had been under continuous cultivation for 4, 10, 30, and 100 years, four organic matter sources; Tithonia diversifolia, Hemsley A. Gray, cattle manure, wood charcoal and fine sawdust were incorporated at the rate of 6 tons C ha-1, for 3 seasons over a 2-year period. Full fertilizer N, P and K rates (120, 100, 100 kg ha-1 respectively) were superimposed to the organic treatment plots. For soil with a long-term 100-year cultivation history, the addition of N, P and K yielded a maximum of 3.0 t ha-1 of maize grain which more than doubled with the addition of Tithonia (6.7t ha-1 and 8.0t ha-1 in the first and second year respectively). For Tithonia, an increase of 2.0 ± 0.6 t ha-1 above the fertilized, no biomass treatment was observed in soil with medium cultivation history (20 yrs). In both years, application of manure increased maize grain yield by a similar 2.0 ± 0.3 t ha-1. No immediate changes to maize yield were noted with application of highly recalcitrant OM (charcoal and saw dust) but in the second year charcoal and sawdust addition yielded 2.9 t ha-1 and 1.7 t ha-1 respectively higher than control. Nutrient uptake by maize crop was significantly improved with the application of Tithonia and charcoal OM. Almost 30% increase in base saturation (%) of the soil was observed with the application of manure. Soil pH, potential CEC and effective CEC were also improved with the use of OM inputs. We show that improved SOM, especially in degraded soil, are an integral part of reversing soil productivity declines in tropical agroecosystems.