CHICAGO: Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade fell Friday, retreating on profit-taking after the most-active March contract hit a two-week top, but still ended higher for the week as funds covered short positions.

K.C. hard red winter wheat and MGEX spring wheat futures also closed lower. The thinly traded MGEX December spring wheat contract tumbled more than 30 cents as it neared expiration on Monday.

Spillover weakness noted in grains from a drop in crude oil prices to multi-year lows.

Amid a lack of major news, the wheat market remains caught between bearish fundamentals, including ample world stocks and poor export demand, and bouts of short-covering that have shrunk total open interest in CBOT wheat futures below 340,000 contracts, the lowest since March 2014.

Argentina is likely to cut taxes on its wheat and corn exports from next week, Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay said.

In its annual long-term projections, the US Department of Agriculture forecast US all-wheat seedings for the 2016/17 marketing year at 53.0 million acres, down from 54.6 million in 2015/16. The USDA put 2016/17 wheat ending stocks at 928 million bushels, above its current 2015/16 forecast for 911 million.

Drought in India has reduced the area seeded to winter crops to 44.23 million hectares so far this year, down 9.1 percent from a year ago, government data showed.

CBOT reported 31 December soft red wheat deliveries and no deliveries of K.C. hard red winter wheat.

For the week, CBOT March wheat rose 6 cents per bushel or 1.2 percent, a second straight weekly rise. K.C. March wheat rose 2 cents for the week while MGEX March spring what fell 7-3/4 cents.—Reuters