Ukraine's grain exports soared fivefold in 2008-09 to a record 24.7m tonnes, buoyed by the relaxation of export curbs as a well as a bumper harvest.

The jump was led by growth in wheat shipments, which soared to 12.7m tonnes in the year to the end of last month from 895,000 a year before, the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation said.

The UAC estimate is narrowly ahead of the 12.5m forecast by the US Department of Agriculture.

Barley shipments from the former breadbasket of the Soviet Union soared to 6.3m tonnes from 1.04m in 2007-08, while corn exports rose from 1.6m tonnes to 5.5m tonnes.

The increased reflected the lifting of export restrictions as well as strong harvests, helped by fair weather as well as the increasing sophistication of Ukrainian agriculture, which has attracted investment from foreign groups such as Landkom International.

Crop write-off

However, shipments are likely to fall sharply this year thanks to some weather setbacks and the drying up of credit, which left many farmers without the funds to invest in plantings or follow up fertilizer and spray applications.

Agrimoney.com has heard of one farm enterprise which has written off 100,000 hectares of rapeseed after a failure to apply fertilizer and insecticides left the crop stunted and pest-damaged.

 Analysts at UkrAgroConsult in June cut to 16.4m tonnes, from 18.1m tonnes, their forecast for Ukrainian grain exports in 2009-10.