Which annotation is used to define a bean in the Spring context?

The @Bean annotation is used to define a bean in the Spring context. When you annotate a method with @Bean, it tells Spring that the method should be used to create and configure a bean. This is commonly used for defining custom beans in Java-based Spring configurations. The other annotations (@Inject, @Component, and @Service) have different purposes and are not used for defining beans in the same way as @Bean.