Gumbi, Zekhethelo SMtsotso, SteveMamushiane, LusaniKobo, Hlabishi I2026-08-072026-08-072026-07http://hdl.handle.net/10204/14880Smart irrigation systems rely on sensing, automation, and communication to improve water-use efficiency and reduce manual intervention. In rural South Africa, however, small-scale farmers continue to face persistent constraints including water scarcity, prolonged dry seasons, limited digital connectivity, and increasing irrigation energy costs, which obstruct the adoption of precision irrigation technologies. This paper presents an automated plant watering system implemented over an opensource private 5G standalone (SA) network using srsRAN and Open5GS. The proposed system integrates soil moisture and environmental sensing, threshold-based irrigation control, and real-time communication between a low-cost sensing node and a Python-based edge application server. In the deployed architecture, the sensing and actuation node connects via Wi-Fi to a 5G user equipment (UE), which provides broadband access to the private 5G network. The system is experimentally evaluated using both network-level and application-level performance measurements. The private 5G testbed achieved round-trip time (RTT) between 19.557 ms and 159.896 ms, uplink throughput of 16.4 Mbps, downlink throughput of 50.9 Mbps, and zero packet loss during testbed evaluation. During application operation, end-to-end RTT ranged from approximately 60 ms to 170 ms for local operation and increased beyond 300 ms when a cloud-based monitoring platform was introduced. The results show that open-source private 5G SA infrastructure can support responsive smart irrigation services while providing a practical and affordable platform for experimentation and pilot-oriented deployment. This study contributes experimental evidence for broadband-based smart irrigation over private 5G SA, an area that remains relatively underexplored compared with low power wide area network (LPWAN) agricultural Internet of Things (IoT) approaches.Fulltexten5GSmart irrigation systemsPrecision agricultureRural connectivityInternet of ThingsIoTDigital inclusionConference Presentationn/a