In recent years, declining soil organic carbon (SOC), nutrient depletion, and reduced water holding capacity have emerged as major challenges to sustainable agriculture in semi-arid regions of central India. Integrating food-fodder crops with perennial legumes and grasses presents a promising alternative to improve system productivity and soil carbon pools (SCPs). To evaluate this, a four-year experiment was conducted at the ICAR-Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, to assess the impacts of land configuration and moisture conservation technologies in food-fodder-based system, i.e. trispecific hybrid fodder grass (TSH) + Leucaena + sorghum + cowpea-chickpea. The study revealed that permanent broad bed and furrow (PBBF) + in-situ moisture conservation (IMC) and PBBF + life saving irrigation (LSI) increased the SOC by 35% compared to flatbed (FB) + rainfed (RF) in sorghum + cowpea-chickpea cropping system. The results exhibited that the maximum potassium permanganate carbon (814 mg kg-1), hot water soluble-carbon (96.5 mg kg-1), soil microbial biomass carbon (292 mg kg-1), particulate organic matter carbon (7.4 mg kg-1), humic acid (59%), and fulvic acid (63%) carbon were recorded under PBBF + LSI treatment, followed by PBBF + IMC management. In contrast, the lowest carbon fraction values were observed under FB + RF system. These findings underscore that adopting food-fodder-based cropping systems with moisture conservation techniques can significantly improve soil quality in the rainfed semi-arid ecosystems of central India and similar eco-regions globally.