Support vector machines (SVMs) have been introduced as effective methods for solving classification problems.However, due to some limitations in practical applications,their generalization performance is sometimes far from the expected level. Therefore, it is meaningful to study SVM ensemble learning. In this paper, a novel genetic algorithm based ensemble learning method, namely Direct Genetic Ensemble (DGE), is proposed. DGE adopts the predictive accuracy of ensemble as the fitness function and searches a good ensemble from the ensemble space. In essence, DGE is also a selective ensemble learning method because the base classifiers of the ensemble are selected according to the solution of genetic algorithm. In comparison with other ensemble learning methods, DGE works on a higher level and is more direct. Different strategies of constructing diverse base classifiers can be utilized in DGE.Experimental results show that SVM ensembles constructed by DGE can achieve better performance than single SVMs,bagged and boosted SVM ensembles. In addition, some valuable conclusions are obtained.