Euronext wheat futures steadied on Friday to come off a two-week low as Chicago prices recovered from a day-earlier plunge and attention turned towards US crop planting forecasts next week. May milling wheat, the benchmark on Euronext's main No 2 wheat contract, was unchanged on the day at 188.50 euros a tonne by 1650 GMT.
The contract earlier slipped to 187.50 euros, setting a lowest since March 12 for the second day in a row, in spillover from Thursday's closing losses in Chicago.
It then steadied as Chicago wheat turned higher, with traders adjusting positions in the run-up to the March 31 planting estimates from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
"We broke through a lot of technical levels yesterday, although commercial operators weren't necessarily selling," one futures dealer said. "Now we have the USDA report coming which people have been waiting for weeks."
The May contract on Euronext was down 4 percent over the week after pulling back sharply from a two-month high of 199.25 euros touched on Monday.
Wheat markets have been pressured by forecasts for rain relief in dry growing belts in the United States and Russia, plus weak export sentiment in the United States.
A slowdown in new export business in the European Union, as importers come to the end of their purchasing cycle, has also weighed on the market.
But EU export volumes so far this season remained on a record pace. The EU this week granted export licences for 721,000 tonnes of soft wheat, taking the total since the beginning of the 2014/15 season to 24.4 million tonnes.
Export activity continued to underpin German prices.
Standard wheat with 12 percent protein content for delivery in Hamburg in April was offered for sale at an unchanged premium of 1 euro over the Paris May contract. Buyers were offering level Paris.
"There is a huge export programme now being processed in German ports with talk of long vessel delays at some ports because of the huge volumes of wheat which need to be loaded," one German trader said. "The processing of past export business is the main focus of attention."
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