Well, more specifically, biologists have found a way to sacrifice a plant's adaptability and improve its efficiency. Plants have multiple redundant systems that allow them to receive and transfer energy. The drawback of these redundancies is that energy is spent on having lots of mediocre pathways instead of one really good one. The benefit is that this makes the plant resistant to disease.
Evolution is an extremely inefficient process, but it is very effective. Top down designs will always be more efficient in the short term, however, we will probably find it worse in the long term.