【Objective】Being the main by-product of crops, crop straw is rich in organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and some other nutrients. The practice of returning or incorporating straw into the field can improve soil physical and chemical properties, soil fertility quality and nutrient recycling, and hence crop yield. However, the practice has quite a number of problems waiting for solution. For example, crop straw is hard to decompose and low in utilization efficiency; produces reducing toxic substances and competes with crops for nitrogen, when decomposing; and induces incidence of crop pests and diseases. Therefore, how to optimize crop straw utilization is of great significance to guaranteeing food safety of the country and improving soil quality. Currently, straw incorporation often goes in combination with tillage, which can not only improve the soil water, fertilizer, gas and heat regimes, but also increase crop yield. It is a good effective and important measure to ensure sustainable development of the agriculture. Although a large volume of researches have recently been reported in China on effects of the combination of straw incorporation with tillage on soil fertility and crop yield of the field, most of them, except a few, focus mainly on effects of the practice in upland fields and fields under rice-wheat rotation system. The double rice-cropping system in South China is a rich resource of rice straw, but it is still unclear how to optimize the combination of straw incorporation with tillage.【Methods】A 3-year stationary field experiment was conducted from 2013 to 2015 to study effects of tillage on crop yield and soil fertility quality in combination with straw incorporation. The field experiment was designed to have four treatments, that is, conventional tillage without straw incorporation (CT), conventional tillage and straw incorporation (CTS), rotary tillage and straw incorporation (RTS) and non-tillage and straw incorporation (NTS). The straw of early rice was crushed into short sections about 5 cm in length simultaneously by the Kubota semi feeding combine harvesting the crop, and spread into the field as basal manure for late rice, and so was the straw of late rice and spread into the field as basal manure for the early rice next year. 【Results】Results show that Treatment CTS was 3.5% and 5.2% higher than Treatment CT and Treatment NTS, respectively, in mean yield of the three cropping of early rice from 2013 to 2015 and 3.6% and 6.4% higher, respectively, in mean yield of the three cropping of late rice. Especially Treatment NTS was markedly lower than Treatment CTS in late rice yield（p<0.05). But Treatment RTS was by 6.1% and 3.1% higher than Treatment CTS, respectively, in early rice yield and late rice yield. The experiment also shows that straw incorporation increased soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP) and readily available potassium (AK). In 2015, Treatments CTS, RTS and NTS were distinctly higher than Treatment CT in SOC, TN, AP and AK. Treatment NTS was 4.9% higher than Treatment CT in soil bulk density (BD) (p<0.05), while Treatment CTS and RTS was 4.1% and 5.2%, respectively, lower than Treatment CT. The declining trend was especially apparent in Treatment RTS. Straw incorporation reduced soil pH by 1.9%, 1.5% and 2.5% in Treatments CTS, RTS and NTS, respectively as compared with Treatment CT, and especially in Treatments CTS and NTS. During the three years of cultivation, Treatment CT exhibited a declining trend in soil fertility, however, in treatments with straw incorporation, soil fertility was on a rising trend. In 2015, Treatment RTS was 16.4% and 80.4% higher, respectively, than Treatment CTS and NTS.【Conclusion】 Obviously, in double rice cropping regions of South China, long-term rotary tillage is better than conventional tillage and zero-tillage in building up soil fertility and improving rice yield, when straw is returned into the field.