I have seen this question being asked multiple times on the R mailing list, but still could not find a satisfactory answer.
Suppose I a matrix m
m
If you want to stick to CRAN packages, then both the matrixStats and the fBasics packages have the function rowMins [note the s which is not in the Biobase function] and a variety of other row and column statistics.
matrixStats
fBasics
rowMins
s
Biobase