March 20 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose over 2 percent on Tuesday, supported by mill fixations and short covering after prices fell to their lowest in nearly three weeks.
* ICE cotton contract for May expiry CTK8 settled up 1.85 cent, or 2.28 percent, at 83.08 cents per lb. This was the biggest daily percentage gain for the contract in nearly 2 weeks.
* The contract hit 80.95 cents per lb earlier in the session, its lowest since March 1.
* "I think what we probably saw today was some fixations... probably large number of them as the market got down to 80.95 cents per lb," said Louis Rose, director of research and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity.
* "So, somewhere around 81 cents per lb, it looks like there is a willingness to fix cotton, and the movement up certainly looked like short covering," Rose added.
* Total futures market volume rose by 1,974 to 31,668 lots. Data showed total open interest fell 3,667 to 268,891 contracts in the previous session.
* Cotton planting in India, the world's top producer of the fiber, could fall 12 percent in the 2018/19 crop year as infestation by the pink bollworm has slashed farmers' incomes and prompted them to choose other crops, industry officials said. China sold 18,001 tonnes of cotton at an auction of state reserves, according to a cotton industry website on Tuesday.
Source: Reuters