The accrual of stabilized soil organic carbon (SOC) can mitigate the atmospheric CO2 concentration and thus climate change. Organic carbon in the fine silt and clay size fraction (OCfine) is typically mineral-associated and thus considered relatively stable compared to the coarse fraction. The SOC saturation concept suggests that this pool has a limited storage capacity, for which the fine soil particle content constrains SOC sequestration. Therefore, fine-textured soils with low OC loading of the fine fraction are thought to have a greater potential to stabilize additional OC than soil with high OC loading and coarse-texture due to their higher available storage space. Here, we assessed soils’ potential to stabilize additional OCfine using 21 temperate agricultural soils. The soils were selected from the archive of the German Agricultural Soil Inventory to analyze SOC gradients (0.7-10.2 %) in three texture classes (sandy, loamy, clayey). After a two-years incubation, we investigated the recovery of 13C labeled litter in two size-based fractions: OCcoarse (>20µm) and OCfine (