NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) – ICE cotton futures rose the most in 2-1/2 weeks on Friday as rains in West Texas, the top U.S.producing region, were seen leaving the crop susceptible to quality damage and prompting concerns about yield loss with more rain forecast for next week.

“TheyΆre barely dried out from last week,” said Peter Egli, director of risk management at British merchant Plexus Cotton. “ThereΆs still a high percentage (of cotton) in the field.” On Monday, trading will begin on ICEΆs new world cotton contract, 0#WCT: which will allow for delivery of cotton grown abroad.Initial volume is expected to come from physical merchants and producers, with speculators and end-users to follow.

December cotton on ICE Futures U.S. CTc1 settled up by 1 cent on Friday, a 1.6 percent gain, at 63.32 cents per pound, marking its sharpest single-session gain since Oct 13. It traded within a range of 62.36 and 63.44 cents a pound.

The contract closed the week up 0.9 percent, and ended the month of October up 4.8 percent, its first monthly gain since June.

Total futures market volume remained unchanged at lots.

Data showed total open interest remained at contracts in the previous session.

Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as of Oct 29 totaled 46,721 480-lb bales, down from 47,132 in the previous session.

The dollar index .DXY was down 0.36 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index .TRJCRB , which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.75 percent.

The Relative Strength Index in the most-active contract CTc1 rose to 53.909.