Abstract: As an important element of anthropogenic soil management practices, tillage typically influences soil organic carbon (SOC) turnover by altering soil physical and chemical properties or directly manipulating the distribution of crop residues within soil. With a specific focus on the dryland wheat fields on the Loess Plateau, in this study, we conducted a field experiment from 2018 to 2020, in which we adopted a single-factor completely randomized block design, and established the following three tillage patterns during the summer fallow period: no tillage, deep plowing and subsoiling. Soil samples were collected from the 0−50 cm soil layers following the dryland wheat harvest in June 2020, and we analyzed the accumulation and mineralization of SOC and the relationships with physicochemical properties under different summer fallow tillage patterns. The results revealed that at soil depth of 0−10 cm, there were significantly higher SOC stock (SOC_stock), SOC sequestration (ΔSOC_stock), SOC sequestration rate (SOC_stock-rate) and SOC sequestration efficiency (SOC_{stock-efficiency}) in soils under the no tillage treatment, which would be advantageous with respect to SOC sequestration within the surface soil. Within the 0−50 cm soil profile, compared with the no tillage treatment, the deep plowing and subsoiling treatments contributed to significant increases of 9.90%−10.40% in SOC_stock, as well as ΔSOC_stock and SOC_stock-rate, although there were no significant differences detected between the deep plowing and subsoiling treatments. Moreover, the regression fitting results revealed that SOC_stock-rate initially increased and subsequently declined in response to an increase in carbon input from exogenous residues. Following 40 days of laboratory incubation, the significantly highest cumulative mineralization of SOC was observed within the 0−30 cm soil layer under deep plowing treatment and within the 30−50 cm soil layer under subsoiling treatment, and we found that the potentially mineralizable carbon was essentially consistent with the cumulative mineralization of SOC. With respect to SOC mineralization rate, we observed the trend of deep plowing > no tillage > subsoiling within the 0−30 cm soil layer, and compared with the subsoiling and no tillage treatments, levels of mineralization rate were found to be significantly lower in the 30−50 cm soil layer under deep plowing treatment. Furthermore, on the basis of redundancy analysis, we identified the soil available nitrogen (AN) content, pH, and soil available phosphorus (AP) content as key factors contributing to differences in the accumulation and mineralization of SOC in soil subjected to different tillage treatments, notably the significant relationships between AN content and each of these tillage practices. Overall, under the assessed experimental conditions, the no tillage pattern was established to have significant short-term advantages with respect to carbon sequestration in the surface soil. On the basis of the observed effects on SOC sequestration and mineralization, an subsoiling tillage pattern is recommended as a measure for promoting carbon sequestration within the 0−50 cm soil layer of dryland wheat fields on the Loess Plateau, China.