This study evaluates the adequacy of soil moisture accounting based sediment graph models (SMA-SGMs) for an arid upland drainage basin of 1520 km2, those are originally evaluated for humid/sub-humid watersheds of size as large as 28 km2. These SGMs fit realistic sediment graphs (SGs) with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 92.18 to 95.66%, besides conserving their mass closely. These SGMs are physically more plausible and precise than the conventional regression relations. Thus, proposed models proves their efficacy over arid Jasnagar sub-basin of Luni river, Rajasthan (India) by simulating and validating sediment response with negligible relative error (RE) in total sediment load/volume (QS), peak sediment load (QPS) and time to peak sediment load (tPS) viz. RE(QS)=7.24%, RE(QPS)=0.43% and RE(tPS) =0, respectively.