Wires_Guy_wires
Imperial Masterpiece
Well there is plenty of research going on relating to the effects of different organisms on and within plant tissues.
Your nitrifying bacteria, fungal endophytes that protect limber pine against white pine blister rust have been identified and isolated from trees in my area. Some combinations confer heat and drought tolerance, deter herbivore browsing and insect damage... etc, etc. Of course the pathogens also heavily studied.
This is all known and being studied. Is anyone looking at how these populations can be effected by foliar sprays of different recipes, not necessarily nitrogen based, carbohydrate or complex carbon maybe or, whatever, it would be an interesting path of investigation I think.
For now we don’t know enough for practical applications, it may be to complicated a system to ever be predictable but general trend could be determined. Even just counting population densities of target beneficial organisms on sprayed vs unsprayed, surely someone somewhere is working on something like that?
Yes, people are working on it. The plant pathology departments of nearly every company are looking in to it. There are some commercially available beneficial micro-organisms. I remember a texas bacterial strain being used, and a lot of trichoderma strains. Trichoderma viride for instance.
But I'm not going to wait for that. I'm going to make isolated cultures from wild pine foliage that remained unaffected by needlecast and other disease. Then see if I can breed those and if inoculation can make any difference.
I dont have any other plants with fungal issues.