"We have had a lot of interest in our sunflower futures contracts with South Africa expecting one of its biggest sunflower crops ever," said Safex agricultural markets division general manager, Rod Gravelet-Blondin.

He told Reuters contract prices would depend on the size of the crop, but added that the price could come in between 1,000 rand ($166) and 1,200 rand a tonne.

The market has estimated the current crop between 750,000 tonnes and one million tonnes as farmers move away from less lucrative and more volatile maize and wheat markets.

Trading hours will be between 0700 and 1000 GMT. The contract size will weigh in at 50 tonnes.

The minimum price movement will be one rand a tonne with a maximum daily price movement of 50 rand a tonne and a maximum position limit of 1,000contracts within 10 days of expiry month.

The National Oil and Protein Producers Organisation said it was fully behind the new sunflower seed futures contracts.

Initial indications in August showed that 690,000 hectares would be planted to sunflowers but this had risen to around 850,000 hectares with a possible production of between 720,000 tonnes and 935,000 tonnes, it said.

The organisation's manager, Nico Vermaak, said initially the introduction of a futures market would not influence the price of the oilseed much because most of the crushing industry's demand had already been filled.

He said the contracts for early February were around 1,300 rand a tonne with the price dipping later in the season to 1,150 rand. The planting season runs from October to January and the crop is harvested from the end of March to June.

"On a 10-year average farmers get about a tonne a hectare, but this year there could be two tonnes per hectare because of the outstanding weather conditions we have had," Vermaak toldReuters.

In some areas in the central northern parts of the country there had been too much rain, which had drowned the plants, and farmers had been obliged to plant up to three times.