A transformation is proposed to convert the nonlinear constraints of the parameters in the mixture transition distribution (MTD) model into box-constraints. The proposed transformation removes the difficulties associated with the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) process in the MTD modeling so that the MLEs of the parameters can be easily obtained via a hybrid algorithm from the evolutionary algorithms and/or quasi-Newton algorithms for global optimization. Simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate MTD modeling by the proposed novel approach through a global search algorithm in R environment. Finally, the proposed approach is used for the MTD modelings of three real data sets.