Network coding can increase multicast throughput,balance the network load and improve the utilization ratio of network resources for optical multicast.But the network coding operation will increase the overhead of computation and requirement of storage in optical field.Due to shortage of optical RAM,we need to try the bes t to reduce times of network coding operations for optical networks.The link number of transmitting encoding information can repre sent the times of encoding operations,So the algorithm of minimizing coding link s based on the improved genetic algorithm is proposed in this paper.In order to prevent the fast convergence speed making algorithm fall into a local optimal solution,the d ynamic mutation is designed in the algorithm and mutation probability is determined by the change of the best individual′s fitne ss in each generation.The new individual accepting strategy and local operation are improved not only to ensure the diversity of th e population but also to enhance the local optimization ability of the algorithm in each round of iteration. The simulation results show that the MCLIGA can minimize the number of links for network coding in optical network and c an find the optimal information transmitting scheme with fewer encoding lin ks in optical network.