Hydrology of Horticultural Substrates: I. Mathematical Models for Moisture Characteristics of Horticultural Container Media

Abstract Moisture retention data were collected for five porous materials: soil, phenolic foam, and three combinations of commonly used media components. Two mathematical functions were evaluated for their ability to describe the water content–soil moisture relationship. A cubic polynomial function with linear parameters previously used on container media was compared to a closed-form nonlinear parameter model developed to describe water conductivity in mineral soils. In most tests for precision, adequacy, accuracy, and validation, the nonlinear function was superior to the simpler power series. The nonlinear function provides an excellent tool for describing the water content for media with widely varying physical properties.