Benign weather has lifts hopes for German crops, with the wheat harvest in the Europe Union's second biggest producer now set to rise.

The country avoided the dry weather which dogged French and UK crops to the west, and floods which dogged Hungary and Poland to the east.

"Weather conditions were relatively beneficial for growth, with somewhat productive precipitation in late May and early June," the farming co-operative Deutscher Raiffeisenverband, or DRV, said.

"The foundation has been laid for a harvest with above-average quality."

Upward revisions

The co-operative, in its second upgrade in two months, lifted its forecast for Germany's winter wheat production – in essence, the whole wheat crop - by 228,000 tonnes to just short of 25m tonnes.

The DRV lifted its hopes for rapeseed too, of which Germany is the largest producer, saying it "assesses the yield development as somewhat more positive than in the previous month".

However, it said it "still expects some reductions, especially in the north and eastern states", leaving output, at 5.91m tonnes, down 5.9% from last year's record harvest, if better than the 5.8m-tonne figure forecast in May.

Hopes for barley were also raised, by some 100,000 tonnes, although, at 10.6m tonnes, the crop will still be nearly 14% down on last year's harvest.

The decline is seen as particularly severe in the spring barley used in malt and beer production, with the crop expected to come in 17.2% lower at 1.83m tonnes.

Better in Bulgaria 

Separately, Bulgaria also cited good weather as it forecast that it was set for a wheat harvest of 4.0m tonnes, in line with last year's, despite lower sowings.

A snow blanket during the winter, and plentiful spring rains had put the country on track for higher yields of both barley and wheat.