Sentence Correction

The strand fills the water during the rainy season that the peat then holds and keeps it humid, all of which creates conditions enabling trees to grow.

A. enabling trees to grow

B. for the trees to grow

C. for growing trees

D. that enable the trees to grow

E. that the trees can grow

OA - D

Any help explaining the right answer and its associated grammar rule.

Also any explanation on the correct usage of "ing" form (in this case enabling) would be much appreciated

Thank you

I am also puzzled by D as OA.
I believe in D "that" refer to conditions. And since conditions is pural and that is singular it's not a right match.
I believe best answer in the choices is A.

This sentence uses the subjunctive mood in D, hence correct.

But subjunctive mood does not mandate the use of 'that' - Is that the only reason why 'D' is correct?

D should be right answer here. If I am not wrong "That" relative pronoun can be used for Singular as we Plural. The condition itself do not make tree grow, so A is out. Conditions help the tree to grow so we need that after conditions.

pawanagarwal wrote:I am also puzzled by D as OA.
I believe in D "that" refer to conditions. And since conditions is pural and that is singular it's not a right match.
I believe best answer in the choices is A.

Not quite correct Pawan. that can modify plurals. For example, following is a correct statement:

All the matches that India won, were close.

I came across a sentence from Manhattan GMAT which might illustrate this point.

A. The rate of language extinction is accelerating, a tendency ultimately culminating in the survival of just a few languages, according to some

B. The rate of language extinction is accelerating, a tendency that will ultimately culminate in the survival of just a few languages, according to some

The correct sentence is B. Because 'accelerating' is in present tense, the word 'will' expresses culmination in the future tense and keeps the correct logical construction in the sentence and hence correct.

Similarly, In the question above - 'The strand fills the water.....peat holds' is in present tense. To keep the response logically correct we should use a future tense in the second half of the sentence. I am not sure why the correct answer is missing 'will' but the correct answer seem to be in future tense.

Am I drawing the right analogy here? Appreciate any thoughts on it.