We present a common problem encountered in genetic conservation
programs recalled by Vales-Alonso et al. (2003). It consists
in determining the optimal contribution (number of
offspring) from each parent to minimize the loss of alleles in
the generated population. These authors deal the problem with
a heuristic method based on a parallel simulated annealing. We
propose an approach that provides an approximate solution with
a very good guarantee. Consider a population consisting of P indi