In the typhoon adaptive observation based on conditional nonlinear optimal perturbation (CNOP),the 'on-off' switch caused by moist physical parameterization in prediction models prevents the conventional adjoint method from providing correct gradient during the optimization process. To address this problem,the capture of CNOP,when the "on-off' switches are included in models,is treated as non-smooth optimization in this study,and the genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced. After detailed algorithm procedures are formulated using an idealized model with parameterization "'on-off" switches in the tbrcing term,the impacts of "on-off' switches on the capture of CNOP are analyzed,and three numerical experiments are conducted to check the effectiveness of GA in capturing CNOP and to analyze the impacts of different initial populations on the optimization result. The result shows that GA is competent for the capture of CNOP in the context of the idealized model with parameterization 'on-off' switches in this study. Finally,the advantages and disadvantages of GA in capturing CNOP are analyzed in detail.