It is important significance to construct and improve the quality paddy layer, promote the sustainable grain yield by studies on the soil structure, nutrient and heavy metal contents in double cropping paddy fields under different tillage measures. The long-term located experiments with five tillage treatments including no tillage (NT-NT), conventional tillage (CT-CT), rotary tillage (RT-RT), conventional tillage-no tillage (CT-NT), and rotary tillage-no tillage (RT-NT) were conducted in double-cropping rice paddy from 2005. The tilth soil depth, soil bulk density, soil carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, nutrients pool and heavy metal Cd content in different tillage treatments were analyzed. The results showed that NT-NT had higher soil bulk density, however, RT-RT, CT-CT, CT-NT and RT-NT reduced it to a ideal interval. Soil organic carbon, active organic carbon, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium and Cd content of CT-NT and RT-NT in 0-5 cm topsoil were significantly lower than those of NT-NT, showing that nutrients and Cd were aggregated to the surface layer of soil and decreased with increasing frequency of farming. Soil nutrient contents of CT-NT and RT-NT were significantly higher than those of NT-NT in 5?10 cm topsoil, but lower than those of RT-RT, CT-CT in 10?20 cm topsoil, demonstrating that the rotational tillage was beneficial to accumulate nutrients, especially in middle soil layer. The order of topsoil thickness, total available nutrients pool and Cd content showed RT-RT>CT-CT>CT-NT, RT-NT>NT-NT, therefore, topsoil layers would shallow, total available nutrients pool, soil total Cd and available Cd would shrink gradually with reducing tillage frequency. Our results indicated that long-term with no tillage, conventional tillage or rotary tillage all have certain drawbacks, no-tillage reduces soil Cd content and soil nutrients pool, conventional tillage or rotary tillage increases soil nutrients pools and soil Cd content. Therefore, the reasonable soil rotational tillage could improve soil structure, promote soil nutrient accumulation, and increase soil nutrients pool, reduce soil Cd content and improve the soil environment.