Dihe

Dihe is what the members of the Kanembu on Lake Chad in the Sahara call a cake-shaped food made from masses of the cyanobacterium spirulina . It is made from the dried, foamy spirulina mass that has been skimmed off from the lake water. Dihe was discovered for Europe in 1964 by the Belgian botanist Jean Léonard when he was crossing the Sahara with a survey team.

The historical background to the discovery of Dihe was described by Orio Ciferri from the Department of Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Pavia, Italy, in a treatise on spirulina algae.

Individual evidence

^ Research. The Discovery of Spirulina. (No longer available online.) Re-Vita International Philippines, archived from the original on June 21, 2010 ; Retrieved on March 3, 2011 (English): “in 1964, a Belgian Botanist named Jean Leonard was part of a surveying party crossing the Sahara Desert. When the party reached Lake Chad, Leonard noticed that the local people of the Kanembu tribe waited for winds to push the blue-green algae toward the shore which became concentrated into a thick mesh. Using hand-made nets of straw, the women scooped the blue-green algae from the lake and dried them into porous dough cakes called 'dihe' “ Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
^ O. Ciferri: Spirulina, the edible microorganism. In: Microbiological reviews. Volume 47, Number 4, December 1983, pp. 551-578, PMID 6420655 , PMC 283708 (free full text) (review).

[RVI-1] Research. The Discovery of Spirulina. (No longer available online.) Re-Vita International Philippines, archived from the original on June 21, 2010 ; Retrieved on March 3, 2011 (English): “in 1964, a Belgian Botanist named Jean Leonard was part of a surveying party crossing the Sahara Desert. When the party reached Lake Chad, Leonard noticed that the local people of the Kanembu tribe waited for winds to push the blue-green algae toward the shore which became concentrated into a thick mesh. Using hand-made nets of straw, the women scooped the blue-green algae from the lake and dried them into porous dough cakes called 'dihe' “ Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2

[2] O. Ciferri: Spirulina, the edible microorganism. In: Microbiological reviews. Volume 47, Number 4, December 1983, pp. 551-578, PMID 6420655 , PMC 283708 (free full text) (review).