The real attraction of the thesis that science can boost crop yields to unprecedented levels by overhauling the photosynthetic machinery in plants is the scale of its ambition.
Improving on a billion years of evolution to create crop plants that produce their own fertiliser, engineering the superior carbon-concentrating mechanism of cyanobacteria into the chloroplasts of less efficient crop plants - these are grand goals. The payoff is potentially a new Green Revolution.
New Scientist is provocative in its editorial stance on this, saying the photosynthetic machinery in plants is "hopelessly outmoded". The magazine quotes molecular biologist Ray Dixon of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, about the prospects and potential payoff of a billion-year upgrade: "These are seriously ambitious schemes for boosting food production. We've got to try them."
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