Dear Camilo,

Many thanks for your suggestion and for the information about Rogerio T. de
Faria work and about your experience with the water balance. What I am
proposing is improving the soil water redistribution equations used in the
traditional tipping bucket approach not abandoning the tipping bucket
approach. The improvements will be in the form of modifying already used
equations or replacing some of these equations. This will keep the water
balance of DSSAT as simple as it has been without requiring any additional
inputs. Although these improvement will keep it simple, the accuracy of soil
water redistribution would be comparable to the numerical solutions of
Richard equation because they have been developed based on the soil water
flow theory and tested using numerical solutions along with field data.
Using numerical solutions of Richard's equation directly in the water
balance of DSSAT is out of the context of what we are trying to accomplish
here! Maybe, it could be a nice idea in the future to let the user have a
chance to choose between the tipping bucket approach and the numerical
solutions of Richard's equation.

I will highly appreciate it if you would share some of the data you have
with us. That will be of great help.

Regards,

Ayman