N.C. In ordinary propagation sweet potatoes are cultivated from sprouts growing out of seed roots, which are actual potatoes, in the ground. One seed root is parent to numerous sprouts. If the seed root sweet potato is the wrong color or shape or is diseased, the mutation or virus is then multiplied by the number of plants sprouting from it. Virtually all sweet potatoes harbor the russet crack virus. Cloning, which circumvents these age-old problems, is carried out through procedures called meristeming and micropropagation.
Scientists begin by selecting the most perfect looking sweet potatoes.
They then cut the meristem off of the potato. The meristem is half a millimeter to a millimeter of the tip of a sweet potato sprout, which is like an ordinary potato eye. The meristems are then cultivated in a sterile medium in a dish until they grow into a plant big enough to be micropropagated. Micropropagation is using small pieces of one plant to create more plants. Those plants are then put it the ground to grow the crop.