Soft red winter wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade rallied early on Wednesday on supportive export news and weather worries, traders said.
At 10:14 am CDT (1514 GMT), CBOT wheat was up 4 to 5 cents per bushel, with July up 5 at $3.56.
Pit sources said Rand Financial spread 500 July/September. ABN AMRO, Refco Inc and TransMarket each bought at least 100 July.
Egypt overnight bought 60,000 tonnes of US wheat, South Korea flour millers were seeking US wheat, and Tunisia was seeking soft wheat, all bullish for futures, traders said.
And early Wednesday, the chairman of the Iraqi Grain Board said it was issuing a tender for next month to buy 100,000 tonnes of hard wheat.
Mohommad Nezer said Iraq would need to buy 2.5 million tonnes of hard wheat per year to meet its domestic needs.
Technical support in the July contract was at $3.48-1/2. Resistance at $3.55-1/2 was broken, driving the contract to a session high of $3.57.