We show that minimal rational components on a complete toric manifold X correspond bijectively to some special primitive collections in the fan defining X, and the associated varieties of minimal rational tangents are linear subspaces. Two applications are given: the first is a classification of n-dimensional toric Fano manifolds with a minimal rational component of degree n, and the second shows that any complete toric manifold satisfying certain combinatorial conditions on the fan has the target rigidity property.
