Quoted from: Gilhespy, Sarah L., Steven Anthony, Laura Cardenas, David Chadwick, Agustin del Prado, Changsheng Li, Thomas Misselbrook et al. "First 20 years of DNDC (DeNitrification DeComposition): model evolution." Ecological modelling 292 (2014): 51-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.09.004 

The DNDC model was first adapted to simulate GHG emissions from rice paddy ecosystems by Li et al. (2004b). The revised model used the ‘anaerobic balloon’ concept to model soil biogeochemistry under the anaerobic conditions found in paddy rice-involved agro-ecosystems. To model rice (and other crop) development and growth, a generic crop model, Modules of an Annual CROp Simulator (MACROS), developed by Penning de Vries et al. (1989) was modified and integrated with DNDC. Pathak et al. (2005) and Babu et al. (2006) further refined the DNDC model developed by Li et al. (2004b) to simulate emissions of CO2, CH4, and N2O under the conditions found in the rice paddies of India.

Fumoto et al., 2008, Fumoto et al., 2010 published research using the DNDC adaptation which was by now labelled as DNDC-Rice. Fumoto et al., 2008, Fumoto et al., 2010 enhanced DNDC’s capacity on modelling paddy biogeochemistry by refining the CO2-induced and DOC-induced CH4 productions. The enhancements carried out by Fumoto et al. (2008) allowed DNDC to improve its performance in predicting CH4 emission from rice fields across a range of climatic, soil, and management scenarios. Fumoto et al. (2010) used the modified DNDC-Rice to assess the CH4 mitigation potentials of alternative water regimes in rice fields in Japan.