Australia's newly-harvested wheat crop fell short of previous hopes because of late-season weather hiccups, which have also prompted a collapse in sorghum sowings, an official report has said.

Australia's commodities research group, Abare, has cut its forecast for 2009-10 wheat production by 337,000 tonnes to 21.7m tonnes.

While leaving output above that the previous year, the figure falls short of the 23.5m tonnes proposed by some analysts earlier in the season, when spring rains eased fears that El Nino had returned Australia to drought.

The US Department of Agriculture last week kept its estimate at 22.5m tonnes.

"Nevertheless, this crop still remains the best crop in four years and should contribute to the global oversupply of wheat," analysts at Commerzbank, the German bank, said.

Weather hiccup 

Abare said that its revision reflected volatile weather late in 2009, when "heatwave conditions… [were] immediately followed by heavy rainfall".

The bureau also cut its estimate of barley production by nearly 250,000 tonnes to 8.05m tonnes, while raising its figure for the canola crop by 140,000 tonnes to 1.91m tonnes, reflecting the greater-than-expected plantings revealed by the Australian Oilseeds Federation last month.

Window closed 

The forecast for grain sorghum production, meanwhile, was slashed by 338,000 tonnes to 1.26m tonnes.

Sowings had been hindered by "hot and dry conditions in the main planting window prior to Christmas", Abare said, pegging plantings at 429,000, down 43% year on year.

"Significant rainfall received in early February over the entire grain sorghum growing region may result in an increase in the area sown in Central Queensland but it is too late for planting any further south," the report added.