Subbaiyan, M. (Professor)Tadesse, Zelalem2018-06-272023-11-092018-06-272023-11-092006-07http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/4179Samples of wheat flour were collected from five different wheat flour processing industries (DHGEDA, KOJJ, Akwan, Redfam, and Misrak.). Different digestion procedures were tested by varying the type of reagent, temperature and time of digestion to develop optimum digestion procedure. The optimal procedure required 4 hours and consumed 6mL of 70% HNO3 and 2mL of 37% HCl to completely digest 10g of wheat flour sample. The accuracy of optimal procedure was checked by digesting a mixture of standard solutions and determining the percent recovery. The recoveries were 92% for Cd and 94% for Zn. the concentrations of Cd and Zn in wheat flour samples were measured by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometery employing a four point external calibration curve. The mean concentration of Cd and Zn in wheat flour in this study ranged (mg/kg DW) from 0.011 to 0.024 mg/kg and 5.93 to 9.88mg/kg respectively. There was no significant difference observed in the levels of Cd and Zn in wheat flour samples obtained from different industries. The wheat flour samples examined in this study are non compliant with the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) for Cd in wheatenCadmium and Essential ZincThesis