Context: Planting nursery-grown trees has become necessary to reach reforestation goals to promote forest recovery; however, these young transplants are vulnerable to drought-related stress and mortality — a trend that is likely to worsen with climate change. One silvicultural solution that has been proposed is to amend the soil water-holding capacity locally around these seedlings’ root systems to reduce drought stress. Although both organic and inorganic soil amendments are commonly used to decrease hydraulic stress in agricultural settings, few studies have examined their effects on conifers under drought stress.

Objective: To examine if the addition of a superabsorbent polymer prolongs seedling survival and ameliorate the physiological constraints imposed by drought. Further, we applied the polymer in three different orientations around the root structure to observe if there is any difference in these factors, which will make these results more replicable in a field trial.