An industry estimate that Russia’s grain crop will “exceed 90m tonnes” this year may prove conservative, to judge by the growth in winter plantings, a leading analyst has said.

Russia, which on latest Washington data has overtaken the US to become the third-biggest wheat producer, could well match last year’s 97m-tonne harvest, Andrey Sizov, the managing director of Moscow-based SovEcon, said.

His assessment followed a rise more than 18m hectares in winter grain plantings, which have historically proved more variable than spring plantings.

“The spring crop area remains relatively stable,” Mr Sizov said, noting the inability of many areas, such as Siberia and the Urals, to plant meaningful amounts of winter grain because of the risk of winterkill.