Context : Galactic open clusters have been long recognized as one of the best tools to investigate the chemical content of Galactic disk and its time evolution .
In the last decade , many efforts have been directed to chemically characterize the old and intermediate age population ; surprisingly , the chemical content of the younger and close counterpart remains largely undetermined .

Aims : In this paper we present the abundance analysis of a sample of 15 G / K members of the young pre-main sequence clusters IC 2602 and IC 2391 .
Along with IC 4665 , these are the first pre-main sequence clusters for which a detailed abundance determination has been carried out so far .

Methods : We analyzed high-resolution , high S/N spectra acquired with different instruments ( UVES and CASPEC at ESO , and the echelle spectrograph at CTIO ) , using MOOG and equivalent width measurements .
Along with metallicity ( [ Fe/H ] ) , we measured Na i , Si i , Ca i , Ti i and Ti ii , and Ni i abundances .
Stars cooler than \sim 5500 show lower Ca i , Ti i , and Na i than warmer stars .
By determining Ti ii abundances , we show that , at least for Ti , this effect is due to NLTE and over-ionization .

Results : We find average metallicities [ Fe/H ] =0 \pm 0.01 and [ Fe/H ] = -0.01 \pm 0.02 for IC 2602 and IC 2391 , respectively .
All the [ X/Fe ] ratios show a solar composition ; the accurate measurements allow us to exclude the presence of star-to-star scatter among the members .

Conclusions :