Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures closed higher Friday on technical buying including short-covering, and worries about dry and potentially frosty weather in Australia, traders said. CBOT December wheat settled up 6 cents at $4.49 per bushel but was unable to break chart resistance at Thursday's one-month high of $4.50-1/2.

K.C. December hard red winter wheat ended up 4 cents at $4.46 a bushel while MGEX December spring wheat fell 11 cents at $6.21-1/2, pressured by soft cash markets and reports of strong Canadian yields. Private analytics firm Informa Economics estimated US 2017 all-wheat production at 1.660 billion bushels, well below the US Department of Agriculture's current estimate of 1.739 billion, according to an Informa client note. Informa pegged the US 2017 hard red spring wheat crop at 301 million bushels, below the USDA's figure of 364 million.

Copyright Reuters, 2017