You'll have to forgive my lack of technical expertise or knowledge, I'm a
layman but have particular questions to ask about this subject.

From news items and reading New Scientist it appears to me that all the
efforts to produce new cultivars and added properties have so far involved
the transfer of genes from one plant or animal to another in order to imbue
the particular plant with a particular quality.

Have any efforts been made not to do this, but to increase the efficiency of
the photosynthesis operating in the plant? I have read that photosynthesis
is in nature a very inefficient process, possibly less than 2% efficient.
Surely
there's huge potential for improvement in this?
Instead of no-freeze tomatoes or disease-resistant crops we'd have crops
which grow in a quarter the time or yield many times the usual amounts in
the same cultivated acreage and with no additional nitrogen required and no
danger of cross-species gene or resistance transfer.

Thanks
Fred.