March wheat opened 2 3/4 cents lower on the day at 517 and established an early range of 494 1/2 to 517 1/4. The wheat market opened moderately lower in line with overnight action and then plunged to sharply lower levels into early mid session. Traders credited the sell off to sharply lower sales of hard red and soft red winter wheat as well as a sharp increase in the official Canadian wheat crop estimate. Locals and funds were sellers on increased volume in the early going. Wheat lost sharply to corn in active trade by spreaders, and Chicago wheat also lost to KC. Net weekly export sales for wheat, came in at 207,600 metric tonnes for the current marketing year and none for the next marketing year for a total of 207,600. Over 60% of the total sales were of soft red wheat, leaving both hard and soft red winter wheat sales at extremely low levels: 17.4 and 11.4 million tonnes respectively. As of November 27, cumulative wheat sales stood at 75.7% of the USDA forecast for 2008/2009 versus a 5 year average of 68.2%. Sales need to average 250,000 tonnes each week to reach the USDA forecast. Statistics Canada released its latest estimate of 2008/09 wheat production at 28.6 million tonnes. This was more than 1 1/2 million tonnes above the average trade estimate.