【Objective】Mizhi County is a hill-gully region, typical of the Loess Plateau, where drought and shortage in water supply is a major factor restraining sustainable and healthy development of apple orchards. At the same time, soil fertility or nutrient status is another affecting tree growth and fruit yield and quality. Therefore, it is essential to study variations of water regime and nutrient status in the soil profiles of apple orchards different in cultivation history, and hence to explore mechanism of soil desiccation leading to nutrient imbalance, in an attempt to provide certain theoretic basis for scientific management of soil water and nutrients, soil building and rational fertilization in apple orchards in hill-gully regions of the Loess Plateau.【Method】Distribution of soil water content in soil profiles, 1000 cm in depth and nutrient contents, including soil organic matter, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, alkaline nitrogen, available phosphorus and readily available potassium, in the 0～300 cm soil layer of the profiles in the apple orchards, 7, 10, 18, 25, 30 and 41 years old, were determined; soil desiccation degrees and soil nutrient status along the soil profiles were evaluated for analysis of their relationships with cultivation history of the orchards and depth of the soil layer, and relationship between soil water content and soil nutrient contents in the 60～300 cm soil layers of the apple orchards relative to cultivation history. 【Result】Results show that the soils of the orchards, regardless of cultivation history, all suffered severe or intense desiccation. Mean soil water content of the 0～1 000 cm soil layer increased first, then decreased and then slightly turned upwards again with age of the orchards. The content of organic matter, total nitrogen and alkaline nitrogen in the 0～300 cm soil layers of the orchards, regardless of age, was less than 6 g kg^-1、0.5 g kg^-1and 30 mg kg^-1, respectively, all falling down to the level of extreme deficiency, whilst the contents of total phosphorous and available phosphorous varied in the range of 5.4～6.5 g kg^-1 and 4.56～11.86 mg kg^-1, respectively, both being on the level of moderate or minor deficiency; and the content of available potassium was 71.98～119.68 mg kg^-1or moderate in nutrient availability level. In the orchards of young apple trees, soil water content was closely related to soil organic matter, total nitrogen and alkaline nitrogen contents, whereas in the orchards of apple trees in the full bearing period and in the decline phase, it was not, which indicates that in the former the soil water regime was well preserved and in the latter the soil water environment deteriorated, with severe or intense soil desiccation occurring in deep soil layers. 【Conclusion】It is, therefore, suggested that besides positive water conservation measures proper to orchards different in age, improvement be made in fertilization, by paying more attention to application of organic manure and nitrogen fertilizer, increasing the application rate of phosphorous fertilizer properly and reducing or even stopping application of potassium fertilizer. Compared with the issue of nutrient imbalance caused by soil drought, the one of soil desiccation should have aroused more concern in the region.