The potato, Solanum tuberosum L., is a vegetable in the plant family Solanaceae, which also includes the fruiting crops of tomato, pepper and eggplant. The edible portion of the potato is a tuber, which is an enlarged portion of an underground branch of a stem called a stolon or rhizome. Potato propagation is normally by seed piece, planting either a whole small tuber or a piece of a larger tuber containing at least one eye.
Vegetative propagation is necessary to assure a very uniform crop for each variety.
Although seed pieces provide genetic uniformity, they have the potential of carrying many diseases and thus it is a good practice to always use certified disease-free seed. There are current attempts to avert this problem by planting seeds from fruits rather than pieces of seed tubers. The true seeds are planted indoors like tomatoes and transplanted to the garden. You may enjoy experimenting with this new technique, but there are several problems with it. First, the seeds are smaller than tomato seeds, and the seedling plants grow rather slowly at first.