The purpose of mutation in GAs is to introduce diversity into the sampled population. Mutation operators are used in an attempt to avoid local minima by preventing the population of chromosomes from becoming too similar to each other, thus slowing or even stopping convergence to the global optimum.

What is the purpose of mutation?

Mutation plays an important role in evolution. The ultimate source of all genetic variation is mutation. Mutation is important as the first step of evolution because it creates a new DNA sequence for a particular gene, creating a new allele.

How does mutation rate affect genetic algorithm?

Using TOO small mutation rates makes the process much slower, induces lack of genetic variety, and eventually it might even not converge correctly. Using LARGE mutation rates makes it really hard for the algorithm to converge at all, because fit solutions are easily lost.