The European Union wheat harvest, the world's biggest, is to rebound above 140m tonnes despite only a marginal rise in sowings - assuming no repeat of the dryness which hampered this year's yields.

Strategie Grains, in its first formal forecast for the EU's 2012 wheat crop, pegged it at 142.4m tonnes, including the durum variety used to make pasta.

A result at that level would be the best since the record 2008 harvest, which topped 150m tonnes, and represent an increase of 3.5% year on year.

And it reflects higher hopes for the average yield, which the analysis group pegged, for non-durum wheat, at 5.8 tonnes per hectare using analysis of historical trends.

This year's yield was held back to 5.6 tonnes per hectare by a historically-dry spring in western Europe, from which many areas have yet fully to recover water levels, although some better-watered eastern countries achieved bumper harvests.

'Adversely wet conditions'

However, the estimate was below a preliminary figure released last month when Strategie Grains pegged the non-durum, or soft wheat, crop at 135.8m tonnes, compared with 133.5m tonnes on Thursday.

The estimate echoes a forecast from the United Nations' food agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, last week that EU wheat sowings would prove "unchanged from last year", bucking a world trend of increased plantings.

"Although wheat prices remain relatively high, crop rotation requirements and attractive prices for other crops will influence farmers' planting decisions," the FAO said.

The agency also flagged "adversely wet conditions" in some parts of Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal and the UK this autumn.

"By contrast, soil moisture availability was less than ideal in some important eastern growing countries such as Hungary and Romania."

This dryness has been reflected in the low water levels which are still disrupting grains transport along the Danube, impeding exports from Eastern Europe.

Back to barley

Strategie Grains estimated that EU farmers would opt increasingly for barley instead, for which sowings will rise by 300,000 hectares to 12.2m hectares, if remaining at a historically low level.

For feed barley, the Canadian Wheat Board, the world's top seller of the grain, noted last month that "fundamentals still remain relatively tight compared to wheat", if adding that "slowly declining world trade over the last five years has taken a lot of the heat out of a tighter supply-and-demand environment".

Strategie Grains estimated the EU's total grains harvest in 2012 at 289.6m tonnes, up 2.0%, with the rate of increase held back by expectations that this year's record corn yields will not be repeated.