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Conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into bioethanol - is an attractive technology but the production cost involved with the process is a main bottleneck in the commercialization of the process. This study deals with the pretreatment of wheat straw using the combination of sodium hydroxide and lime. The pretreatments were evaluated based on the total reducing sugar yield obtained in the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis. Factors considered in the study were sodium hydroxide loading, lime loading, residence time and biomass particle size. A central composite design was used to evaluate the significance and the interactions of the factors, which shows sodium hydroxide has a significant effect on the total sugar yield. The optimized sugar yield obtained by using Design-Expert 7.0 was 703.243 mg g-1 raw biomass, which was obtained at the combination of 1.10% sodium hydroxide , 0.075 g g-1 lime of raw biomass, 3.30 h residence time and 24.78 mm particle size.