Chicago corn futures prices gained traction on Tuesday as energy prices firmed earlier in the session, a bit of relief from seven days of consecutive losses that plunged corn prices to 3-1/2 year lows, traders said.

Grain markets also saw some short-covering ahead of Thursday's World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report.

CBOT May corn settled the day up 3-3/4 cents at $3.31-1/2 per bushel. Earlier in the session, May corn futures rose to $3.35-1/2 per bushel,

The day's price bump was weighed down by ongoing concerns over the pandemic's long-term impact on the livestock market, another key consumer of grains, at the fast-spreading coronavirus continues to disrupt global supplies and stoke worries about weakening demand, traders said.

Rallies also were capped by collapsing margins for producers of corn-based ethanol and expectations for a jump in US corn plantings compared with last year.

Warm weather across the Mississippi River Delta over the next few days should favor germination of corn that has already been planted, space technology company Maxar said in a client note, but colder weather is expected by the end of the week.

USDA said it expected to release its first estimates of US planting progress for corn and spring wheat in next week's crop progress report.

slew of US ethanol plants have shut down as fuel demand has collapsed during the coronavirus outbreak, and meatpackers have been hit by a worrying side-effect: less carbon dioxide is now available to chill beef, poultry and pork.