Conceptual knowledge is the clear and detailed understanding of principles, concepts, models or theories and the understanding of the linking relationships between them. Conceptual knowledge is acquired by thoughtful, reflective learning, listening, reading, or viewing. From the question, Vance is demonstrating conceptual knowledge because he has the explicit understanding of why rainfall amounts affect different types of vegetation positively and others negatively.
They can use those recently discovered genes and insert them in another species (fruits and vegetables) using genetic ingeniery technics so they can speed up the cell division on them, and accordingly increase the production.