NYSE Liffe's commodity futures - which include wheat, maize (corn), rapeseed, white sugar, robusta coffee and cocoa - stopped trading at about 1235 GMT and did not reopen until 1620 GMT, shortly before the regular closing time of 1630 GMT.

"It was a case of getting a settlement price for the market," a French futures dealer said of the move to resume trading just before closing.

As in two shorter outages this week, one earlier on Friday and another on Monday, NYSE Liffe referred to a "technical issue" without giving further details.

The impact of Friday's prolonged outage was limited by the fact many European operators were away at an annual gathering of the grain trade and by relatively subdued trading in Chicago, the world's benchmark futures market for commodities including wheat, maize (corn) and soybeans.

"Our fear was that the US market was going to go way off in a different direction," another French dealer said.

Following the latest outage on Friday, trading in agricultural commodity futures in Paris and London went into pre-open mode, which allows operators to place orders pending the start of trading, at 1350 GMT.

But unlike in the previous outages when trading resumed within 15 minutes, the futures remained in pre-open for two-and-a-half hours before the brief resumption.