Kansas City, Mo. ? The Kansas City Board of Trade will begin electronic trading in its wheat and stock index futures contracts later this year.

The trading of hard red winter wheat and the board’s Value Line stock-index futures and options contracts will operate off an electronic trading platform used by the Chicago Board of Trade.

The financial terms of the agreement were not released. Under the agreement, the 128-year-old Kansas City exchange will remain independent.

Open outcry trading of wheat futures will continue during regular hours; electronic trading in wheat will be offered after hours.

The Kansas City Value Line pit will close and that contract will trade only electronically.

“This is a large change for this exchange,” said Jeff Borchardt, president and chief executive officer of the Kansas City Board of Trade. “It has been traditional for a long time.”

The Value Line is a broad-based index of 1,650 stocks. The Kansas City Board of Trade was the first exchange to trade stock-index futures contracts when it launched the Value Line product in 1982.

The contract allows investors to hedge against moves in the stock market. In the 1980s and ’90s, it was not unusual for 12,000 Value Line contracts a day to trade in Kansas City. The exchange said only a handful of Value Line contracts currently trade each day.