Potato

Potatoes are food items that can be planted, consumed raw, or cooked in a furnace to make baked potatoes.

Potatoes are a rare drop from zombies, and are found as crops in Villager farms. Along with carrots, potatoes require farmland in order to grow, but do not have an accompanying seed item. A potato item is instead planted directly in farmland, and upon maturing will yield 1 - 4 identical potato items which can again be used or replanted.

Farming
When farmed, potatoes they will take 8 stages to grow. However, there are only 4 distinct textures, so only 4 visible stages: every two stages have the same texture, except that growth stage 7 keeps the same appearance as stages 5-6, so that only stage 8 has the final, 'mature' appearance.

Fully grown potato crops drop 1 to 4 potatoes and have a 2% chance of dropping an additional poisonous potato. As of Minecraft 1.5, potato yield can now be increased using a tool with the Fortune enchantment; previously Fortune had no effect on potatoes. Currently, potatoes can be found as a rare drop from zombies and also in NPC Villages alongside wheat and carrots. Bone meal can be used to mature the potato to its last stage of growth.

As a cooking ingredient
Baked potatoes can be obtained by cooking the raw potatoes in a furnace with some kind of fuel.