The cyclicity index of a matrix is the cyclicity index of its critical subgraph, namely, the subgraph of the adjacency graph which consists of all cycles of the maximal average weight. The cyclicity index of a graph is the least common multiple of the cyclicity indices of all its maximal strongly connected subgraphs, and the cyclicity index of a strongly connected graph is the least common divisor of the lengths of its (directed) cycles. In this paper we obtain the characterization of linear, possibly non-surjective, transformations of tropical matrices preserving the cyclicity index. It appears that non-bijective maps with these properties exist and all maps are exhausted by transposition, renumbering of vertices, Hadamard multiplication with a matrix of a certain special structure, and certain diagonal transformation. Moreover, only diagonal transformation can be non-bijective.