PARIS: European wheat prices edged higher on Monday, helped up by buoyant US markets and indications that crops on both sides of the Atlantic were vulnerable to freeze damage.
December milling wheat on Paris-based Euronext was 0.5 percent higher by 1715 GMT at 161.25 euros a tonne.
The absence of damaging low temperatures across most of Europe has limited frost kill to grain crops so far this season but it has also left them fragile to a cold spell, the European Union's crop monitor MARS said on Monday.
In the United States, a combination of planting delays and dry conditions in the southern US Plains have left the hard red winter crop vulnerable to freeze damage, crop experts said, which could tighten supplies of high-protein wheat.
CME Group's Black Sea wheat and corn futures launched on Monday with an opening trade recorded on August Black Sea wheat at $184.50 per tonne for 40 lots, CME said.
On the French and German cash markets activity was slowing down as operators were preparing for the Christmas break.
Standard bread wheat with 12 percent protein content for January delivery in Hamburg was offered for sale at 3.50 euros over the Paris March contract, with buyers at about 2.50 euros over Paris.
"Demand is starting to slacken ahead of the Christmas break," one German trader said. "There are hopes of an increase in wheat loadings in German ports in January from their current depressed levels."
"But internal demand, especially from the feed industry, is again more in focus than exports," the trader said.
Feed wheat prices Germany's South Oldenburg market were once more above milling wheat, with January delivery offered for sale unchanged at about 173.50 euros a tonne, with buyers around 173 euros.
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