CHICAGO, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural futures closed mixed on Wednesday, with corn and wheat rising and soybean falling.

The most active corn contract for May delivery rose 1.25 cents, or 0.36 percent, to close at 3.485 U.S. dollars per bushel. May wheat gained 18.5 cents, or 3.29 percent, to close at 5.8 dollars per bushel. May soybeans slipped 5.25 cents, or 0.59 percent, to settle at 8.815 dollars per bushel.

CBOT brokers estimated that funds had bought 3,100 contracts of corn, 9,900 contracts of wheat while being flat in soybeans.

Wheat futures rallied on massive fund buying of 10,000 contracts. But market analysts held that the wheat rally was based on speculative buying, as they did not find COVID-19 impacted countries were panicked to purchase.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that the U.S. weekly ethanol production declined to 1,005 barrels a day, as against 1,035 barrels a day last week. The ethanol production consumed 295 million bushels of corn as compared to 304 million bushels the week prior.

The decline was as expected with big closures/drops in production coming in the weeks ahead. U.S. ethanol producers are losing an estimated 0.80 dollars per bushel.

China has secured one million metric tons of U.S. old corn to date. Market analysts forecast that China could secure another one to 1.5 million metric tons.

USDA reported that the United States sold 138,000 metric tons of U.S. corn to an unknown buyer, and the market analysts believed it was China. There was also talk that China had started securing U.S. new crop soybeans for September/October.

Market analysts maintained that corn would remain bearish on sliding U.S. ethanol production and slowing world feed grain trade. Enditem

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