Firstly, some plants have evolved to do photosynthesis more efficiently. One of the projects in the article (the one I work on) is to take a particularly efficient kind of naturally occurring photosynthesis - C4 photosynthesis - and copy it over to species that don't already have it. Sugarcane is an example of a plant with very efficient photosynthesis.
Secondly, there are relatively few evolutionary innovations in photosynthesis for several reasons. The main one is that the global environment is constantly changing - the atmosphere is very different now than it was 1.6 billion years ago when photosynthesis first evolved. The atmosphere started out with no oxygen, so photosynthesis first evolved to handle that scenario. But photosynthesis releases oxygen by breaking up water molecules, so it gradually oxygenated the atmosphere and depleted the carbon dioxide. Modern conditions with very high oxygen and low carbon break a lot of the assumptions that were fixed into the early photosynthetic system, so improvements tend to be workarounds because evolution mainly builds on what is already there.
The thing that humans have that evolution doesn't is the ability to reason about the system. Evolution is like an optimisation algorithm working within constraints, and humans are like software engineers that can change the constraints.
I forgot to add a second reason why there are few innovations in photosynthesis. In most ecosystems, photosynthesis is not the limiting factor. Other things like water, space, mineral nutrients and predation are more important, so there is no evolutionary pressure for photosynthesis to improve.
But in agriculture we solve those problems - we provide space, water and nutrients, and we keep pests and competition away. Then photosynthesis becomes the limiting factor.
Firstly, some plants have evolved to do photosynthesis more efficiently. One of the projects in the article (the one I work on) is to take a particularly efficient kind of naturally occurring photosynthesis - C4 photosynthesis - and copy it over to species that don't already have it. Sugarcane is an example of a plant with very efficient photosynthesis.
Secondly, there are relatively few evolutionary innovations in photosynthesis for several reasons. The main one is that the global environment is constantly changing - the atmosphere is very different now than it was 1.6 billion years ago when photosynthesis first evolved. The atmosphere started out with no oxygen, so photosynthesis first evolved to handle that scenario. But photosynthesis releases oxygen by breaking up water molecules, so it gradually oxygenated the atmosphere and depleted the carbon dioxide. Modern conditions with very high oxygen and low carbon break a lot of the assumptions that were fixed into the early photosynthetic system, so improvements tend to be workarounds because evolution mainly builds on what is already there.
The thing that humans have that evolution doesn't is the ability to reason about the system. Evolution is like an optimisation algorithm working within constraints, and humans are like software engineers that can change the constraints.