In an area of yellow podzolic latossol, five differents conditions of soil use, were compared: natural forest, recently, one and five years of annual crops, and three years of fallow following two years of annual crops. The organic matter was characterized by grain-size fractionation method. In the soils after burring and one year of cropping, plant residues in the litter and 0-15 em layer werw much less abundant than under the natural vegetation. Such evolution continued up to five years of cultivation, but was cultivation, but was reserved when the soil was abondoned and fallow developed. Carbon of the very fine fractiones (less than 50 μm), which concentrates the clay-humic complex material, remained almost unchanged. Chemical fractionation of this material shewed that under annual crops the humus composition changed, and the amount of fulvic acids, principally those soluble in sodium hydroxide, increased, contrary to the humic acid. This results suggest that hamus incorporated non-polymeric material from the crops, and that a de-polymerisation process of the pre-existing clay-humic complex material ocuured. This process stopped under fallow and the humus then returned to its initial equilibrium.