“…Numerical modeling is an efficient tool for understanding the physical, chemical and biological processes affecting nitrate-N transport, as well as in predicting and managing nitrate-N pollution (van der Laan et al, 2014). Numerous studies have been published to model the fate and transport of nitrogen in soils, focusing either on nitrogen leaching in the root zone (Nakamura et al, 2004;Skaggs et al, 2004;Gärdenäs et al, 2005;Hanson et al, 2006;Tafteh and Sepaskhah, 2012;Arbat et al, 2013;Deb et al, 2015;Iqbal et al, 2016) or on nitrate-N transport and transformation in the saturated zone (MacQuarrie et al, 2001;Lee et al, 2006). Various models have been applied to simulate soil water and nitrogen dynamics in soils, such as soil-crop model (STICS) (Ledoux et al, 2007;Poch-Massegú et al, 2014;Plaza-bonilla et al, 2015), Root Zone Water Quality Model (RZWQM) (Ma et al, 1998), Agricultural Production Systems SIMulator (APSIM) (Keating et al, 2003), Cropping System Simulation Model (CropSyst) (Stöckle et al, 2003), Soil Water Balance Model (SWB-Sci) (van der Laan et al, 2014), as well as simple models solving water and nitrate-N production functions (Cabon et al, 1991).…”