In order to accurately evaluate the soil quality characteristics of cotton fields under different nitrogen application measures，and explore the effect of nitrogen application on soil quality and cotton yield，taking the continuous cropping cotton field in northern Jiangxi Province as the research object，four treatments were set up from 2021 to 2023，including no nitrogen control(CK)，conventional nitrogen application(CF)，nitrogen reduction(M1)and nitrogen reduction with organic fertilizer application(M2). Sixteen soil physical，chemical and biological indicators of nitrogen application treatment were determined，and the principal component analysis method was used to construct the minimum soil dataset，evaluate the soil quality and verify the effect，and the nitrogen application measures that synergistically improve soil quality，cotton yield and yield stability were selected. The results showed that the minimum dataset of cotton field soil quality evaluation was composed of seven indicators，including soil bulk density，total phosphorus，nitrate nitrogen，alkali hydrolyzable nitrogen，available phosphorus，available potassium content and C/N ratio，and the simplified rate of evaluation indicators was 56.25%. The soil quality index calculated based on the minimum soil dataset was significantly positively correlated with the soil quality index of the whole dataset(R2=0.8418，P<0.05)，and the soil quality indexes of CF，M1 and M2 treatments based on the minimum dataset were 0.57，0.39 and 0.64，respectively. Under the same condition of reducing nitrogen fertilizer by 20%，applying organic fertilizer containing 10% total nitrogen significantly improved the seed cotton yield by increasing the number of bolls per plant，boll weight per boll and lint percentage，and significantly improved the stability of cotton yield at the same yield sustainability level. In conclusion，the minimum dataset could be used for the evaluation of soil quality under different nitrogen application measures，achieving a good evaluation effect on the basis of simplifying the total index of 56.25%；Reducing the local conventional nitrogen application by 20% and applying organic fertilizer containing 10% total nitrogen could effectively improve the performance and stability of cotton yield on the basis of maintaining the soil quality level，which could be used as the best nitrogen application measure in northern Jiangxi cotton region in the Yangtze River Basin.