Determining the relative efficiency of photosynthesis and photovoltaics is not a simple problem (scientificamerican.com)
And yet this wonderful solution is still woefully inefficient; while the theoretical efficiency of photosynthesis is about 11 %, in reality a variety of factors limit it to not more than 6 % /. (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
In a 2016 article in Science, one of us (Stephen Long) and colleagues at other institutions demonstrated that improving the efficiency of photosynthesis in tobacco increased its growth by 20 percent. (scientificamerican.com)