The International Grains Council has added 8m tonnes – the equivalent of Argentine output – to its forecast for world wheat production in 2010-11, noting higher levels of plantings in all top-three producers.

The global wheat harvest will hit 653m tonnes in the next crop year, 21m tonnes lower than in 2009-10 but still the third-highest crop on record.

While the intergovernmental group failed to elucidate differences in its thinking since last month, when a meeting of its council noted an estimate of 645m tonnes, it flagged a "small" rise in plantings in China, the world's biggest wheat producer.

Sowings in India were forecast 2% higher, while in the European Union, the second-ranked producer, "conditions remain favourable for winter wheat [and] sowings are expected to increase at the expense of barley".

The IGC released its data hours after private analysis group Strategie Grains said that barley, which loses Brussels intervention support this year, looked like falling even further out of favour with European farmers than it had earlier expected.

Winterkill 

However, the IGC flagged the risk of winterkill in former Soviet Union countries, noting that crops had "been exposed to frost damage".

And the council said that America's drift from wheat, evident in Washington data last week pegging US winter wheat sowings at their lowest since 1913, might be spreading north of the border.

"Some of Canada's farmers may switch from spring wheat to oilseeds or pulses," the IGC said, forecasting global plantings down 1% at 221m hectares.

Quality 'doubts' 

The estimate of a global crop of 674m tonnes in 2009-10 was a 6m-tonne rise on the previous figure, with the council noting "sharply higher" assessments of Black Sea and Canadian production.

For corn, the IGC followed the USDA in lifting by 4m tonnes, to 334m tonnes, its estimate of America's 20009-10 production.

"But doubts remain about quality," the report added.