Agence France-Presse . Sydney

Australia's rice crop will drop by 90 per cent and cotton production will fall 58 per cent this year as a result of water shortages in the south, the nation's commodities forecaster said Tuesday.

Above average rainfall in the northeast, however, meant the grain sorghum crop would increase by 80 per cent to a record 2.45 million tonnes in 2007-08, The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics said.

'While recent floods... damaged some of central Queensland's grain sorghum crop, the increased yield potential in the southern Queensland grain sorghum growing regions will more than offset the losses,' executive director Phillip Glyde said in ABARE's monthly Australian Crop Report for February.

Glyde said total summer crop production was forecast at more than 3 million tonnes, almost 40 per cent higher than last year but well short of the 2000-01 record of 5.3 million tonnes.

A lack of irrigation water at the time of planting caused by Australia's long-running drought meant that only 4,942 acres of rice and 155,680 acres of cotton were planted last year, ABARE said.

Rice production in 2007-08 is forecast at 18,000 tonnes, about 90 per cent lower than the 2006-07 harvest. Cotton lint and cottonseed production were forecast to fall 58 per cent to 116,000 tonnes and 164,000 tonnes respectively.

ABARE said the 2007-08 winter cropping season was up 30 per cent on the previous year's harvest which had been hard hit by the drought, but was still below average.

The bureau said total winter grains production was estimated at about 22.6 million tonnes in 2007-08, well down on the five-year average of 35 million.

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