  Let ${\mathcal D}^{k,l}(m,n)$ be the set of all the integer points in the
transportation polytope of $kn\times ln$ matrices with row sums $lm$ and column
sums $km$. In this paper we find the sharp lower bound on the tropical
determinant over the set ${\mathcal D}^{k,l}(m,n)$. This integer
piecewise-linear programming problem in arbitrary dimension turns out to be
equivalent to an integer non-linear (in fact, quadratic) optimization problem
in dimension two. We also compute the sharp upper bound on a modification of
the tropical determinant, where the maximum over all the transversals in a
matrix is replaced with the minimum.
