Japan's agriculture ministry on Wednesday bought 42,910 tonnes of U.S. soft red winter wheat for livestock feed use, avoiding the soft white variety after a genetically modified (GMO) version was recently discovered growing in Oregon.

Japan, the world's sixth-biggest importer of wheat, put a ban on imports of U.S. soft white grown in the west when it resumed feed wheat tenders last month after a temporary halt in the wake of the GMO discovery in late May.

Japan stipulated on the resumption of the tenders that offers for U.S. feed wheat should only be of the soft red winter variety mainly grown in the Southeast and that shipments couldn't come from the Pacific Northwest.

In a tender that closed on Wednesday, Japan's farm ministry had sought to buy 120,000 tonnes of feed wheat and 200,000 tonnes of feed barley.

In Japan's so-called simultaneous buy and sell system (SBS), end-users for feed wheat can negotiate the origin, price and quantity of grain with trading companies prior to jointly submitting bids to the government.

Japan's farm ministry maintains tight controls on imports to protect local production, which accounts for about 10 percent of domestic wheat demand.

Details of results of the tender are as follows (in tonnes):

FEED WHEAT

Country Quantity Average Price

U.S. 42,910 n.a.

FEED BARLEY

Country Quantity Average Price

Australia 32,250 n.a.

Shipments: loading by Oct. 31 or arrival by Dec. 31.