Jan 30 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures inched higher on Wednesday, as investors eyed developments from trade talks between the United States and China and as a weaker dollar lent further support to the natural fiber.

* The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S. - the March

contract - settled up 0.21 cent, or 0.28 percent, at

74.36 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 73.76 and 74.55 cents a lb.

* “People are awaiting for any results on the trade talks, positive or negative,” said Keith Brown, principal at cotton brokers Keith Brown and Co in Moultrie, Georgia, adding a drop in the dollar helped spur cotton higher.

* The dollar index was down 0.5 percent after the Federal Reserve said it would be patient in lifting borrowing costs further this year.

* A weaker greenback makes commodities priced in dollars, such as cotton, less expensive for holders of other currencies.

* The United States and China opened a pivotal round of high-level talks on Wednesday aimed at digging out from their months-long trade war.

* In 2018, cotton marked its first yearly decline in four years, largely because of the trade tussle between the United States and China, the top exporter and biggest consumer of the natural fiber, respectively.

* The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would resume publishing reports on Thursday of weekly export sales, whose announcements were suspended during the partial government shutdown that lasted more than a month.

* Total futures market volume fell by 10,293 to 19,530 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 908 to 231,628 contracts in the previous session.

* Certificated cotton stocks <CERT-COT-STX> deliverable as of Jan. 29 totaled 120,309 480-lb bales, down from 120,823 in the previous session.

(Reporting by Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney)