Some major Brazilian soya states, such as Mato Grosso and Goias, restricted planting of winter irrigated soyabeans in a bid to stop the spread of Asian soya rust disease, agriculture officials said on Tuesday.
It follows advice from the government's agricultural research agency Embrapa urging state governments to ban soyabean planting between July 1 and September 30 so as to break the link with the main summer soyabean crop.
Brazil lost an estimated 2.3 million tonnes of soyabeans from the 2005/06 (October-September) crop due to soya rust and spent $2.7 billion on fungicides trying to control the airborne disease which thrives in warm, damp conditions.
Mato Grosso and Goias, Brazil's No 1 and No 4 soya producers, respectively, as well as Tocantins in northern Brazil, authorised winter soyabean planting only for seed production and research.